Cat Power's 2006 album, The Greatest claimed this year's Shortlist Music Prize, beating out albums by Girl Talk, Band of Horses, Beirut, Bonnie Prince Billy, Hot Chip, Joanna Newsom, Regina Spektor, Tom Waits, and Spank Rock. The Shortlist Prize has been around since 2001 and honors artists who haven't become certified Gold by the Record Industry Association of America. Which is a good thing, but who really gives a fuck about the RIAA? Anyway, so Cat Power won it this year, so good for her/them.
The judges are a collection of well-known artists who, honestly, mostly suck real bad. See, the terrible injustice here is that these asshats are nominating some indie artist who could own their ass any day. To make it worse, they give them a prize that basically says, "well, sorry you didn't go Gold, we did and you didn't, so here is a music prize for you." That's really not very nice. Let me go on and name a few of these so-called "artists": Panic! At The Disco, The Killer's Ronnie Vannucci, and Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody. Panic! At The Disco? Are you kidding me? That's almost a fucking insult to Cat Power and all the other great artists up for the prize. It's hard to believe they're serious.
Well, congratulations Cat Power -- although, you probably didn't care whether or not you won it. I'm going to guess that you make music because you love it. Not to have some atrocious teenie emo band vote for you. Making music because you love to. That's kind of the point isn't it?
In other news, The Killers still can suuuuck it.
