Cool? It’s a question of timing

I always thought that the Mercury music awards were supposed to be cutting-edge – a celebration of new, raw, breaking musical talent, but they have missed a trick and last night’s winner, The Arctic Monkeys, made a big mistake by turning up.
The Sheffield band’s rise to fame is well documented: a steady surge of interest amongst the teens fuelled by MySpace word of mouse and a healthy collection of mirror sites hosting mp3s of their live gigs.
The music is real shit on your shoes and punch in your face stuff – they have a passing resemblance to The Clash, but that’s not the point.
The Arctic Monkeys were a byword for cool in 2005. If you were over 25 and liked them last year, you too could be cool, so long as you didn’t talk about them. It was too late earlier this year when their first album was released: you had to be familiar with their tunes before the CD hit your player. And to get into the band now they’re Mercury winners well, you’re just too late.
This just shows up the Mercury judges for being past-it has-beens. They should have torn up the rule book and given the Monkeys the prize in 2005 before they had released their first album. Now that would have been cool.