Jessie Ware has been shortlisted for the 2023 Mercury Prize for her fifth album.
The singer-songwriter’s April release That! Feels Good! is one of 12 competing for the prestigious album of the year award, which celebrates the best British and Irish music.
The Jewish musician - who has received six Brit Award nominations over the course of her career - is up against five-time nominees Arctic Monkeys, whose debut album won in 2006, Scottish band Young Fathers and former Rudimental singer Olivia Dean.
This is the second nomination for the 38-year-old pop star who once worked for the JC. Her top five debut album of soulful pop, Devotion, was nominated in 2012, when the prize was won by alt-J.
Ware’s celebratory and sensual disco-fuelled That! Feels Good! followed 2020’s dancefloor-ready What’s Your Pleasure? and has been widely acclaimed.
Jessie Ware
Jessie Ware has received six Brit Award nominations over the course of her career (Photo: Getty)
As she walked the red carpet at the nominations event yesterday, the mother-of-three said she was proud to be the oldest woman on this year’s shortlist.
Last year she had her bat mitzvah at the age of 38, in her mother’s living room.
“All my loved ones were there, and it was led by three strong women that have always been present in my Jewish upbringing,” Ware has said of the occasion. “It felt really powerful and beautiful and special.”
As well as garnering 2.9m monthly Spotify listeners, Ware is known for Table Manners, the weekly podcast about food and family that she hosts with her mother Lennie and that features guests from the worlds of culture and politics. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer appears on her latest, and final, episode of this series.
Ware is not the only musician with Jewish heritage on this year’s Mercury shortlist. South London rapper Loyle Carner was born in 1995 to a Guyanese father and a Jewish mother. His stage name is a spoonerism of his birth name Ben Coyle-Larner.
Like Ware, this is his second Mercury nomination. He received the nod for October’s hip-hop album Hugo, which explores the musician's identity and mixed-race heritage, as well as masculinity.
