The Stars Are Underground

Told you so. Badly Drawn Boy kept my immaculate Mercury Music Prize tip-the-winner-months-before-anyone-else record intact by carrying off the prize last Tuesday night. In from 10/1 to joint favourite on the night with Coldplay at 2/1, he had to fight off a very strong last-minute challenge from Kathryn Williams (those folkies really like their Mercurys) to prevail. It was always pretty obvious that Coldplay didn't stand a chance despite their short odds - they're far too "white bread" for the Mercury people.

Naturally, the assembled media at the ceremony were all pulling for Kathryn Williams, simply because if she had won it would have made a dream story: Williams (26) from Newcastle couldn't get any record company interested in her beguiling series of folk tunes (they were, and still are, too busy cloning Britney Spears in order to launch a new army of talentless, but ever-so-pretty sub-porn stars) so she set up her own record company in the bedroom of her terraced house. She made her debut album for the sum of £80, while her second, the one that was nominated (Little Black Numbers) was made for less than £3,000 and she paid for it herself by waitressing.

Not that the Mercury panel, to their credit, take this into consideration when selecting the winner. They've always said, and they're right, that it doesn't matter if an album has sold five copies or five million, or if the person behind it is on the front cover of Q magazine or working in a printer's (as Badly Drawn Boy was until recently), or if the album is pop, rock, dance, jazz, classical or simply unclassifiable. This is why the Mercury is the most important music award around - even if they did award it to (spit) M People in 1994.

Whether you agree with their nominations each year or not, there is no disputing the fact that certain acts they've championed over the years (Norma Waterson, Roni Size, Talvin Singh, and now Kathryn Williams) simply don't get radio air-play and TV exposure and are rarely, if ever, prioritised by their record companies. And without sounding too ridiculous about it: Kathyryn Williams is happily overweight, doesn't describe herself as photogenic, but still has more talent in one of her split-ends than the majority of this week's top 30.

Thanks to the Mercury exposure, acts like Williams, Waterson, Size and Singh suddenly have access to a media previously denied them and guess what, the evidence shows that people will go and buy their records if their attention is drawn to them. Roni Size went from 20,000 sales to 600,000 sales on the back of his Mercury win; Gomez went from 85,000 to 330,000. Of this year's nominations, and this was before the result was announced, Williams had a 310 per cent increase in sales since her nomination, and although that's only about 15,000 records so far, that's an awful lot for a niche folk artist. She can expect to at least treble that amount over the next few months, too, thanks to giving Badly Drawn Boy the fright of his musical life last Tuesday.

Another of this year's nominees who will deservedly up his profile is the Asian artist, Nitin Sawhney. If you've never heard of him it's because radio won't play him and TV won't show him. But just how good is his Beyond Skin album? This good: when Paul McCartney heard it, he got into his car and drove straight around to Sawhney's house to congratulate him himself. And Madonna (bless her) never tires of telling anybody how she listens to Beyond Skin at least once a day.

Sometimes it pays to dig a bit deeper than the five-star album reviews, the full-page ads and the front cover stars. Sometimes. Well done Badly Drawn Boy.

The Hour of the Bewilderbeast is on the Twisted Nerve/XL label; Kathryn Williams's Little Black Numbers is on the Caw label (you'll get it quickest on amazon.co.uk, believe me); Nitin Sawhney's Beyond Skin is on the Outcaste label.