Have you always wanted a cool BFF who's super into music and can tell you who you should be listening to for extra social currency and bragging rights? Us too. So, we decided to call up BBC Radio 1 presenter Alice Levine, ahead of the Mercury Awards where she's due to present with Nick Grimshaw, to talk pre-show nerves and who we should be rooting for...
**Hey Alice! So, tell us. How nervous are you about presenting the Mercurys? **
Oh my God, of course I'm nervous. Yes, absolutely. It’s a really big deal and it’s something I've followed as an observer and scrutinised and commented on. It's everywhere, isn't it? You can't avoid it when it's happening and people are always talking about it so I'm really proud to be a part of it.
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What's your biggest fear on the night?
Tripping up, obviously! It’s kind of OK on my side of things because Nick Grimshaw has to do the big announcements on stage and I’m with the pundits having a chat about it, which I’d like to say is the less scary part because I could imagine announcing the wrong person – which would be terrible. It’s that thing about being live where anything can happen, you’re against the clock and there’s a lot of eyes on you. I had a panic about announcing the shortlist, especially as I was in a room full of music industry people so I really couldn't get anything wrong but I put my best headgirl voice on and it all went OK.
**How have you been preparing for the job? **
By listening to a lot of music! I’ve heard of them all but I hadn’t listened to a lot of GoGo Penguin or to an awful lot of Polar Bear or Anna Calvi so I reacquainted myself with them.
Who are your favourites?
FKA Twigs is brilliant live and is definitely one to watch no matter what the result is and I've been a fan of Bombay Bicycle Club for a long time. Twigs came into the Live Lounge and sang Two Weeks recently and it's just an incredibly dark, broody pop song that really cuts through. And, Kate Tempest has so many tracks that I like. She has this incredible charisma. Her spoken poetic delivery is a style of musical performance that I wouldn’t have necessarily engaged in before as it's so different but she somehow manages to make it her own. She describes her album as a long section of stories and that’s what it comes across as you become really invested in the story.
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And, what are you going to wear?
I wore WilliamVintage to the shortlist announcement because he has a ridiculously incredible archive of vintage and one-off pieces so I borrowed a beautiful dress from him for that. There's a dress that I’ve tried on there for the awards but I'm worried it’s a bit too glitzy and that the cameras will go completely berserk because it's so sparkly. I may play it a bit safer as there’s a really nice L.K. Bennett blouse and skirt set that I found, so maybe I'll go for separates this time.
Who are the newer artists we need to keep an ear on?
There's an artist called Shirin that I really like at the moment. I found him on a blog a little while ago and he's all about really colourful pop and R'n'B with loads of bright production. He's still at that very fledgling level though and then there's this Brooklyn band called Wet and they're brilliant. I used to play their track I Don't Wanna Be Your Girl* *a lot on radio and I like their latest one, *Move Me. *
What music should we all be listening to?
I feel like grime is having a real moment right now. I think there's a real appetite for it so listen to some Skepta!
What are your thoughts on women in the music industry?
I think it’s really funny that people are trying to compare FKA Twigs, Kate Tempest and Anna Calvi. It feels really arbitary as they’re such different artists. I think it’s a waste of time analysing people by gender and I'm bored of that categorisation because I just think, have we not moved on at all? No one says Oh Nick Mulvey and Jungle, they’re both guys, how do they differ? It feels really arbitrary and lazy. I would like to see more women doing more stuff. I don’t know statistics but from an observational level, there aren’t as many women on the radio on primetime slots and there aren’t as many women on the Mercury list as there are men so it’d be lovely to see it equal.
What did you think of Taylor Swift calling people who keep quizzing her on singing about her love life sexist?
She stood her ground and said ‘look, this is what writers have done for hundreds and hundreds of years. They've written about love and spoken about unrequited love and broken love' and I can see why she’d get enraged because she’s writing her own stuff and that immediately makes people see it in an autobiographical way and try to work out who she’s talking about. It definitely is really unfair. I mean Ed Sheeran’s lyrics where he talks about the hotel room in *Don't *are more explicit than anything Taylor’s written but it’s that whole woman scorned thing, isn’t it? It comes back to people being fascinated by women who dare to discuss such things. I’m glad she’s standing up for herself.
The 2014 Mercury Prize Winner will be announced on 29 October.
*Like this? Then you might also be interested in: ***
Anna Calvi: I Find It Strange That Women Are Seen As A Minority
#TBT Lisa Maffia: 'I Didn't Even Put On A Skirt Until The 21 Seconds Video'
Follow Delphine on Twitter @delphinechui
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.