Tom Dunne: Memories of first Choice Prize a reminder of how far Irish music has come
Julie Feeney with Tom Dunne after winning the first Choice Music Prize. Picture: Liam Sweeney
The Choice Music Prize celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and you’d have to say looking at the line-up, that it is rude good health. Two acts, Fontaines DC and Kneecap are vastly too successful to interrupt their touring schedules to attend. That is the kind of problem Irish bands want and deserve.
Twenty years ago, it wasn’t quite like that. Then, U2 were basking in the glow of 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The Vertigo tours was setting all kinds of records. The figures read like telephone numbers. For 2005: a gross of $260 million in 110 sold-out concerts, $138.9m from 1.4m tickets sold in the USA alone.
It won Billboard awards for Top Tour, Top Draw, and Top Single Event, and their management company Principle Management won for Top Manager. By the time it finished, it had sold 4,619,021 tickets from 131 shows to be the second-highest grossing tour with $389m earned.
Naturally the fall back to the other Irish bands was somewhat steep. Not that other Irish acts weren’t doing well: Damien Rice, Damien Dempsey, Gemma Hayes and BellX1 were all having great years. Just not the $389m earned kind of years.
It was at the level just below this that help was needed. Those coming through with new albums – often of startling originality - who were struggling to cut through above the noise, to get airplay, gigs, publicity, a chance at longevity.
In the UK they had come up with the idea of the Mercury Music Prize. The idea there was for a panel of music experts to adjudicate on what they thought was the Album of the Year. It would be decided on artistic merit alone, would carry a substantial cash prize and obvious industry wide kudos.
The winning effect was substantial. When Elbow won with The Seldom Seen Kid in 2008 they saw a 700% increase in album sales. But the real power of the award was how each year’s winner seemed to enshrine that year’s zeitgeist.
Albums like Primal Scream’s Screamadelica in 1992, the inaugural year, Suede’s eponymous debut in 1993 and Pulp’s Different Class in 1996 seemed to encapsulate what was happening. There were missteps, but time and time again – winners like Gomez in 1998 and Badly Drawn Boy in 2000 – just confirmed its finger on the pulse credentials.
In this country, it was journalist Jim Carroll and manager Dave Reid who first mooted the idea of an Irish equivalent. Today FM, making a name for itself at the time, and my then show Pet Sounds, made excellent, and enthusiastic partners for the launch.
The 2005 nominees - BellX1, Cane 141, The Chalets, Joe Chester, Duke Special, Hal, Nick Kelly, Emmet Tinley, Turn and Julie Feeney - all told different tales of individuality and originality. The awards night itself was exciting and chaotic in a totally, rock and roll, wonderful kind of way.
BellX1, masters of all they surveyed in the aftermath of their fantastic Flocks album seemed a shoe in. But then again, Joe Chester’s A Murder of Crows was spectacular. Hal were Brian Wilson type geniuses, Emmet Tinley’s voice! And Duke’s Adventures in Gramophone! Be still my heart.
Julie Feeney’s win with 13 Songs surprised many. But its win did what such awards are supposed to do. It sent us back to listen to the album afresh and gave Julie the kind of shot in the arm, the financial boost and renewed self-belief that artists need to convince them to persevere.
This year’s nominees are a different proposition. A Lazarus Soul, Curtisy, Fontaines DC, Orla Gartland, KNEECAP, NewDad, Niamh Regan, Róis, Silverbacks, and Sprints just have more about them collectively.
Many of the class of 2005 seemed to go into it with a determination to try and make something great followed by a little bit of surprise that other people liked it and then a then slowly developed “right how to I take this forward” attitude.
The class of 2025 seem to have a lot more self-belief, nous and know how about them. I suspect that it was the establishment of BIMM (British and Irish Modern Music Institute) in Dublin, the music college that has been a game changer here.
Meeting people like yourself who are already serious enough about music to attend a college to learn more about it is vital. You get one shot, as Eminem might say, so use it. But before BIMM codified it all, the Choice Music Prize was, and still is, absolutely vital.
