Sam Fender wins Mercury Prize 2025 for album People Watching
Judges say Fender's "classic" album will take "pride of place in record collections for years to come"
"We didn't think that was going to happen at all, I've just spent the last 10 minutes crying," Fender tells BBC after accepting prize
The awards show is in Fender's home city of Newcastle - the first time in its 34-year history that it is being held outside of London
CMAT, PinkPantheress and Pulp were among the 12 other nominees, while Wolf Alice made history by becoming the only act to have been nominated for all of their first four albums
You can watch a delayed stream of all the performances by hitting the button at the top of the page
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Getty ImagesThe penultimate performance comes from Welsh pianist Joe Webb.
He brings a touch of La La Land jazz bar energy to the Mercury stage, showcasing the supple, playful keyboard chops that powered his debut album Hamstrings and Hurricanes.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Warner RecordsIn a Reddit Q&A, PinkPantheress said Fancy That represents a "more fun" side to her personality than the introspective, "emo asf" lyrics of her debut album Heaven Knows.
She certainly seems to be having a blast on party-centric club cuts like Romeo and Tonight, while Illegal can stake a claim to being song of the summer after its opening lyrics – "My name is Pink and it's really nice to meet you" – inspired more than 39 million TikToks.
Musically, it's a breathless, colourful sprint through a night out, full of conversational asides and budding romance.
The 24-year-old looks back to the music of her youth for the soundtrack, liberally sampling hits by Underworld, Basement Jaxx and Just Jack - without surrendering her own bubbly brew of capsule pop.
It's all over in about 20 minutes - the shortest-ever Mercury Prize nominee. But what a rush.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Harry Durrant/Getty ImagesPinkPantheress can’t be in Newcastle tonight because she’s about to start her US tour - but she’s sent a little video message.
“I’m very devastated I can’t come but I’m honoured to be nominated alongside some of my favourite artists from the UK,” she says from what looks like her grandma’s living room.
After the brief message, we’re treated to a clip of her viral smash Illegal from her Glastonbury debut earlier this summer.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Young / Atlantic RecordsInspired by underground raves, FKA Twigs' third album is all about losing yourself in music - those moments of raw humanity where you stop thinking and simply feel.
Eusexua, she has said, is a word that describes "the tingling clarity" you get when you're struck by a new idea, when you kiss a stranger, or even "the moment before an orgasm".
The album attempts to recreate that feeling with a series of abstract, futuristic soundscapes and deconstructed club tracks.
They hypnotise and thrill, especially on Girl Feels Good, a whirling techno anthem that recalls Madonna's Ray Of Light; and the appropriately titled Drums Of Death, which chops up 13-year-old K-Pop samples into a pneumatic celebration of sex.
In mixing the cerebral with the sensual, Eusexua mostly succeeds - but occasionally the precision of Twigs' vision suffocates the spontaneity she was aiming for.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, PA MediaNext up is FKA Twigs, performing the title track from her second Mercury nominated album, Eusexua.
Dressed in a diaphanous silver gown, fluttering in the breeze of two wind machines, she contorts and convulses in time to the song’s spiralling, intensifying electronic pulse.
It’s utterly captivating.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Island RecordsFife's Jacob Alon is possessed of an otherworldly voice - simultaneously angelic and tremulous with vulnerability.
It's used to heart-wrenching effect on their debut album, singing of the physical ache of unrequited love, over delicately strummed guitars and brushed drums.
Fairy In A Bottle is a glorious bruise of a song, all about Alon's capacity for self-deception: "I want to worship you before the hope expires." Confession, meanwhile, captures the crushing confusion Alon felt when an ex-boyfriend denied all knowledge of their relationship
In Limerence has earned the singer-songwriter rave reviews - as well as comparisons to Jeff Buckley and Adrianne Lenker - but the best response came from their mother.
"She sent me a one-line message and said, 'It's like a dream I didn't want to wake up from'," they told the BBC earlier this year.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Getty ImagesJacob Alon opens their performance of Fairy In A Bottle by singing an improvised “Free Palestine.”
They’ve been a vocal critic of Israel’s military action in Gaza, and walked the red carpet at the Mercury Prize nominations in a keffiyeh scarf - a symbol of Palestinian identity.
They repeat the statement during the song, drawing a cheer of support from some of the crowd at the Utilita Arena.
You can now listen live to BBC Radio 6 Music's special show on the Mercury Prize by clicking the button at the top of the page.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, ParlophoneMore now about Emma Jean-Thackray's Weirdo.
"Making this record saved my life," she told 10 Magazine, external.
Written after her partner of 12 years unexpectedly died, the sprawling, soul-searching record finds Thackray re-examining every facet of her life as she tried to rebuild it.
"I needed to find a way back to myself after being so lost and everything I am is music - nothing else matters," she explained. "It's a survival record - full of pain but also silliness."
Recorded alone in her south London flat, the album is surprisingly light on its feet. The jazz-funk grooves are trippily curvaceous, the harmonies transcendent.
Borne of grief, it becomes a celebration of survival.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, PA MediaEmma-Jean Thackray is on stage to play Save Me, a rhythmically, funky track from her Mercury-nominated album, Weirdo.
Written in the throes of grief after her partner died, it’s a lyrical cry for help that has an unexpectedly joyous sound.
"I think if you’re singing about something heavy, you need to have quite a catchy melody with it," she told music site Stereogum.
"If you’re just saying, 'I’m really sad,' people aren’t necessarily going to pick up on that. But if you’re spinning it into more of a story, people listen more.
"I was just thinking about me; I needed to make a joke for myself to help me process it."
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, XL RecordingsThe fourth album by Dublin's Fontaines DC sees the quintet take their scratchy, sinister sound and run it through a Technicolor filter.
Where their previous albums were firmly rooted in Ireland, Romance was inspired by the neon lights of Tokyo and classic Japanese animation Akira, whose themes of nuclear era paranoia inform the band's nervy guitar anthems.
Lead single Starburster is a second-by-second account of a panic attack singer Grian Chatten experienced at London's St Pancras Station. In The Modern World tackles the disillusionment of getting to Hollywood and discovering its seedy underbelly.
Recorded after a US tour with the Arctic Monkeys, Romance saw Fontaines reach for a bigger audience without compromising their principles. "I didn't want to write, like, a Champagne Supernova, but I did want to do something that felt like it was deep within and far without," Chatten told the Guardian., external
The gamble paid off, with songs like Favourite and Bug ringing out around stadiums this summer - marking out Fontaines as the biggest guitar band of the 2020s.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Fontaines DC aren't performing tonight - so we’re treated to a pre-recorded live performance of their song Starburster, in which frontman Grian Chatten tries to convey the feeling of a panic attack in a mile-a-minute onslaught of words and thoughts and big, deep, heaving breaths.
More on their album, Romance, next.
Image source, Euan Cherry/Getty ImagesMark Savage
Music correspondent
Tonight’s ceremony reignites a friendly rivalry between Pulp and the first family of British folk music.
In 1996, Norma Waterson lost the Mercury Prize by just one vote to Pulp’s Different Class. This year, her husband, Martin Carthy, faces Jarvis Cocker for the same award.
At the age of 84, Carthy is the prize’s oldest ever nominee. But he doesn’t harbour any grudges.
"Jarvis is utterly honourable," he told the BBC, recalling how the singer sat and shared stories with his late wife, immediately after collecting Pulp’s Prize.
"He's a great singer, he's a great writer. He's just a great guy."
Image source, Dave Benett/Getty ImagesPulp picked up the 1996 prize
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, HEM RecordsThe father of the 1960s British folk scene, Martin Carthy was a direct influence on everyone from Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to Billy Bragg and Blur's Graham Coxon.
Released on his 84th birthday, Transform Me Then Into A Fish is a recreation of his 1965 debut album, the songs reappraised through a lens of age and experience.
Carthy's voice is careworn but it's never less than compelling. Over the years, the musician's delivery has become more conversational - lending a fresh pathos to Lovely Joan, the story of a maid who tricks a naïve suitor into handing over his jewellery, then steals his horse.
Carthy is the third member of his family to receive a Mercury nomination, after daughter Eliza and his late wife, Norma Waterson.
Famously, Norma lost to Pulp by just one vote in 1996, but Carthy said he didn't bear a grudge. "Jarvis is utterly honourable," he told the BBC. "He's a great singer, he's a great writer. He's just a great guy."
When he first excavated and recorded these songs six decades ago, they were forgotten relics. Now, they are part of the folk canon - but as he closes the circle of his long career, Carthy shows how adaptable they (and he) remain.
Mark Savage & Colin Paterson
Music correspondent & Entertainment correspondent
Image source, PA MediaOne of Britain’s most important folk musicians, Martin Carthy, is up next, playing Scarborough Fair.
His 1960s arrangement of the song became world-famous after he gifted it to Paul Simon.
Tonight, as on his nominated album Transform Me Then Into A Fish, he plays it in a new version, powered by a mystical sitar line.
The audience lets out a huge cheer as he holds aloft his Mercury Prize nominee trophy - all 12 here tonight were awarded one.
He was backed on stage by his daughter Liza Carthy (twice a Mercury nominee herself) who was wearing a red dress and red football socks with white hoops - the colours of Middlesbrough FC, a bold choice for a stage in Newcastle.
Colin Paterson
Entertainment Correspondent, reporting from the Mercury Prize
Image source, Euan Cherry/Getty ImagesCMAT has emerged as the bookie's favourite to win tonight. She's been on a big upwards trajectory, having been nominated for the Mercury Prize in two consecutive years, touring her third album Euro-Country across the world.
I asked her how significant it is to be up for the prize once again in such quick succession.
"I was a bit like maybe I shouldn't release the two records close together, but I think it's testament to how they're not really looking at anything other than records and albums", she says.
She describes her ability to talk as "a bit gobbledygook-y", with the amount of antibiotics she's on because her wisdom teeth have been removed.
"I was supposed to do Paris fashion week and my entire cheek was connected to my neck, it was so swollen," she says.
I teased her about how difficult it must have been for her to keep her mouth shut for a week, "Wow - I mean rude but accurate to be fair, very, very accurate," she joked.
Alongside post-punk sensation Fontaines DC, she has the opportunity tonight to become the first Irish winner of the Mercury Prize.
"I think it would be really nice for a record that is predominantly about Ireland to be the first Irish winner."
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, AWAL"I didn't think I was going to make another record so quickly," said CMAT of the follow-up to her Mercury-nominated second album, Crazymad, For Me.
"[But] when all these ideas started landing, I knew I needed to do this before I could do anything else."
Any fears that Euro-Country would be a cynical cash-grab sequel were quickly allayed. Every song packs a punch, whether she's singing about the Irish financial crisis of 2008 or her irrational hatred of Jamie Oliver ("OK! Don't be a bitch! The man's got kids and they wouldn't like this!" she sings.)
Smart, subversive and funny, the album contains some painfully sharp observations on relationships and impossible beauty standards that had her "trying to wax my legs with tape" at the age of nine.
Anyone who saw CMAT's vivid festival performances this summer has already been won over. Euro-Country seals the deal.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, PA MediaThe next nominee is Irish star CMAT, whose anthemic, dynamic third album Euro-Country reflects on money, identity and grief.
She can’t perform on doctor’s orders after having all of her bottom wisdom teeth removed - and she told me she’s "furious" she can’t be up on stage tonight.
But they’re showing a video of her insanely uplifting Glastonbury performance to make up for it.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Only one artist in the 34-year history of the Mercury Prize has taken home the trophy more than once.
That’s PJ Harvey, who was recognised first for her 2000 album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea; and again for 2011’s Let England Shake.
Her record could be equalled tonight, with two former winners in the running. After a 24-year gap, Pulp are back at the top of their game with More.
They last won in 1996 for Different Class – the album that spawned Common People.
A more recent winner is London rock quartet Wolf Alice, who picked up the 2018 Mercury Prize for Visions Of A Life, which judges described as "an exuberant tapestry of swirling pop, grunge and indie guitar rock”.
They’ve received their fourth consecutive nomination for The Clearing, a tight, melodic album that sees them experiment with the sounds of 1970s FM rock.
I spoke to them about it last week. Read the interview here.
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Wolf Alice's fourth album has been their most polarising to date.
Working with US producer Greg Kurstin and adopting a polished soft rock sheen, the band have received 10/10 reviews from the NME and DIY Magazine ("their boldest, most striking record yet") but scathing critiques from rock publications Uncut and The Quietus, which dismissed it as "less edgy than Sheryl Crow".
It was definitely a head-spinner for fans expecting them to stick to their blend of 90s indie, shoegaze and dream pop.
Take lead single Bloom Baby Bloom. It's an anarchic song, full of two-bar guitar solos and ostentatious drum fills. Disorientating on first listen, the aural chaos serves a purpose, as singer Ellie Rowsell confronts misogyny and self-doubt in the verses before rising above the noise for a bucolic chorus.
Other songs are more straightforward - Just Two Girls is a warm and nostalgic reflection on friendship, and Passenger Seat is all pillowy melancholy as Rowsell recalls a road trip with an ex.
Like that song, The Clearing's cirriform melodies are best experienced on a coastal drive with the windows down and the wind blowing through your hair.
Ultimately, the band's fourth consecutive Mercury nomination is well deserved.
Image source, Sony Music