Mark Savage
Reporting from the Hammersmith Apollo

As the montage of nominated albums, you can ascertain who the music industry bigwigs want to win.

Olivia Dean gets a huge cheer from the fancy tables at the front; in the circle next to me, everyone goes wild for Jockstrap.

I don’t have a clap-o-meter (note to self: buy a clap-o-meter for next year) but it feels like Loyle Carner and Young Fathers are the favourites in the room.

Mark Savage
BBC Music correspondent

Image source, .

The exclamation marks are deliberate. Jessie Ware's fifth album That! Feels Good! is a big old celebration of sensual pleasure and escapism, set to a thumping disco beat.

It builds on the groundwork of 2020's What's Your Pleasure, a dancefloor-focused album that acted as a reset button on Ware's career.

This time round, she adds a soulful, brassy bounce to the four-on-floor beats, with the help of the eight-piece band Kokoroko.

Highlights include Free Yourself, a giddy anthem to sexual autonomy. "Why don't you please yourself? If it feels so good then don't you stop!" sings Ware in full diva mode.

Shake The Bottle is a flirtatious invitation to "make my bottle pop".

On These Lips she whispers coyly: "These two lips could do so much more."

The title of Freak Me Now is self-explanatory.

"Weirdly, considering I'm quite prudish, I've found it really fun tapping into this world," she told the BBC.

"It gives me freedom musically. Hopefully it's slightly classy, with a bit of innuendo." Mission accomplished.

The critics said: "It's an album that confirms the sound of an artist continuing to push forward, a unified expression of joy that is never anything but bold, playful and fun." - Music OMH, external

The performances are under way at the Hammersmith Apollo.

The first on stage is Jessie Ware, who is nominated for her album That! Feels Good!

Mark Savage
Reporting from the Hammersmith Apollo

There's chaos inside the Hammersmith Apollo, where the bar is unable to accept card payments.

They’re not set up for cash either.

Everybody is being handed paper cups of iced water. I bet that’s not the case on the artists' tables.

Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

Singer Raye, who is shortlisted for My 21st Century Blues, says it “feels like some sort of sick dream” to be up for the Mercury Prize.

She tells the BBC's Mark Savage her album being recognised is “something the young me wouldn’t even believe was a reality”.

“I’m savouring this moment, got my whole family coming tonight, and I’m just so grateful,” she says.

Raye was originally signed to a major record label, but has previously talked about the struggles she had to convince them to release her album.

Social media users came to her defence when she explained her situation, and she went on to leave the label altogether.

“Twitter kind of saved me,” she recalls.

“I became an independent artist and took some time to just shed any other opinions, any negative words. I put out an album that I love and believe in, and I just trusted my instincts and my gut and just got super lucky, the stars aligned.”

London rapper Little Simz walked away with the much-coveted Mercury award last year.

The 28-year-old took the £25,000 award for her fourth album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, a hip-hop coming-of-age tale delivered with a cinematic sweep.

She told the ceremony in London on Tuesday she was"very overwhelmed and grateful" to receive the honour.

And the star paid tribute to the other nominees, who included Self Esteem, Wet Leg, Harry Styles and Sam Fender.

"We all made incredible albums," she said on stage."We all changed people's lives with our music, and that's the most important thing."

Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter

We've been hearing from a lot of the nominees ahead of tonight's ceremony - including Olivia Dean, who is is nominated tonight for her album Messy.

She describes as a“warm cup of tomato soup on a Sunday afternoon”.

“It’s going to fill you up, really nicely, in your soul and in your heart,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Colin Paterson.

“And you might dance around too. You’re going to go through a spectrum of emotions but you’re going to feel really good at the end.”

Dean, who went to the Brit school and has also worked with Rudimental, counts Carole King, Aretha Franklin and Lauryn Hill among her musical influences.

Her album is, she explains, dedicated to her grandmother Carmen - who came to the UK as part of Windrush and is celebrating her 80th birthday this week.

Asked how she feels about being shortlisted, Dean says:

“It means everything, I know some people are really cool and like‘awards don’t mean anything’, but they do.

“And I feel really blessed and grateful to be recognised because I worked really hard on this album and I put my whole heart into it and it feels epic to be here.”

Mark Savage
Reporting from the Hammersmith Apollo

Image source, Reuters

Pulp, Primal Scream, PJ Harvey, Skepta, Wolf Alice - the Mercury Prize gets it right more often than not. Even when the judges’ choose what seems like an outlier - James Blake, say, in 2013 - history often proves them right.

But the only predictable thing about the Mercury is it’s unpredictability.

Any of the 12 albums on tonight’s shortlist would be a worthy winner, from Jessie Ware’s flirtatious disco opus That! Feels Good! to Loyle Carner’s rumination on fatherhood in Hugo.

On the red carpet, no-one really seemed to mind whether they won or not - although Carner’s eyes lit up when I told him the prize comes with a cheque for £25,000.

The award’s real value is exposure: The Irish folk band Lankum told me they’d been contacted by hundreds of people on social media who’d discovered their music through the shortlist.

That said, a win becomes a permanent line in your biography - even for a band as big as the Arctic Monkeys.

We’ll find out who gets that honour in just a couple of hours.

Here are the 12 nominees from the British Isles, who all have albums contending for the Mercury Prize 2023:

• Arctic Monkeys - The Car
• Ezra Collective - Where I’m Meant to Be
• Fred Again... - Actual Life 3(January 1 - September 9, 2022)
• Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!
• J Hus - Beautiful And Brutal Yard
• Jockstrap - I Love You Jennifer B
• Lankum - False Lankum
• Loyle Carner - hugo
• Olivia Dean - Messy
• Raye - My 21st Century Blues
• Shygirl - Nymph
• Young Fathers - Heavy Heavy

Heather Sharp
Live reporter

Good evening. You join us as we gear up to find out the winner of this year’s £25,000 Mercury Prize for the best British and Irish album of the year.

Rapper Loyle Carner, former winners Young Fathers and experimental pop artists Jockstrap are among the favourites to win, but with the prize known for its unpredictability, it’s a waiting game until the winner is announced around 2200 BST.

The stars have already been out on the red carpet, and within the next hour the ceremony will be getting under way, with performances by most of the 12 nominees.

Stay with us and we’ll bring you the best pictures, interviews and all the background. And of course, the moment itself.