7. Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m1J6dMS8lo If you open up Google (other search engines are available) and have a look at the results for "best albums of all time", you will most likely get many, many different lists from a variety of sources. Each magazine or website will have carefully selected their choices of albums they think are better than the rest, and chances are several will call their list "definitive". While it's clear that music taste is entirely subjective, these lists will overlap significantly in the records they include. One album which you can almost guarantee will be included in just about every list is Radiohead's OK Computer. And one album that very rarely pops up? Roni Size/Reprazent's New Forms. You can probably guess which of those two albums won the Mercury Prize in 1997. It's not that New Forms is necessarily a bad record, it's just that up against OK Computer it quickly fades into the background. The fact it won is entirely understandable though. A sprawling drum 'n' bass double album, it came out just as that genre was at its peak, and the judges clearly wanted to recognise its popularity in some way. That they probably should have done this two years earlier with Goldie's Timeless - not even nominated - is another story. Unfortunately, the judges couldn't have foreseen that New Forms would quickly sink without a trace, while OK Computer would come to be lauded as the modern masterpiece it clearly is.