Annual Mercury Music Prize has revealed it's shortlist selected among the initial 200 albums released from July 2007 to July 2008. Now we have 12 candidates and one of them is going to get the Mercury curse (or not).

Last year it was the rave music newbie Klaxons who won the prize. There surely deserved the award, but let's see if they will ever release their second album.

This year the finalists are:

Among the albums, I have listened to 5 of them and very possibly none of these 5 is going to the award, so I think I am gonna skip them and if one of them does in the end win the award, I'll just pick it up from here. You can Radiohead in the shortlist, but not Coldplay. This must be very disturbing for some people, but considering the commercial success of Coldplay and stuff, I think they don't really care about the award. They don't need the curse anyway.

At the same time, bookmakers are making their bets. The odds have been revealed for the hopefuls. Radiohead and The Last Shadow Puppets are leading the race at 5/1. That is totally understandable. Radioheard is huge but never won the award and The Last Show Puppets has a member whose band won the award a couple of years ago.

It's good to see the band British Sea Power on the list. They should have been on it since their first album. Duffy is not on the list while Adele is having 8/1 chance to win. What a bummer!

It's also kind of a tradition to see the shortlist comprised of some successful musicians and some unheard-of artists as such ****.

At the end of the day, you shouldn't take an award very seriously. It only reflects the certain taste of a certain group. Mercury Award doesn't like pop and dance (except for Talvin Singh). That is for sure. However they do have urban acts on the list from time to time. Ms. Dynamite and Dizzee Rascal won the awards years ago. It's always fun to see those awards, because you know indeed you have something to debate about or even rant about for not including your favorites.