Brian Boyd on music

My sizeable bet on Elbow to win the Mercury was looking a tad vulnerable last Tuesday night, when most of the Mercury acts gathered to perform before the result was announced.

Since the 12 nominees were announced two months ago, the bookies first had Radiohead the outright favourites until the very dark horse that was Burial took over that position a month ago. Elbow never rose above third favourite.

Word soon got around last Tuesday that a "massive bet" had been placed on Burial just hours before the winner was announced. So big was this wager that William Hill said it was the biggest in the award's history.

Anxious looks were passed around the Elbow table, and most were agreed that a bet of that nature (William Hill won't reveal the figure, but when a bookmaker of its size uses the word "massive", you can only assume it was for an awful lot) meant that the mysterious dub-step artist that is Burial had it in the bag.

Hence the delirium when Jools Holland announced Elbow's name (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KULmBd8EHkU). But if you knew anything about music and the Mercury, you wouldn't have shared Elbow's doubts.

When the 12 nominated acts were announced in July, the chairman of the Mercury judging panel, Simon Frith (it's not clear whether he has a vote or plays an actual part in the judging process, such is the Mercury's secretiveness) emphasised that the Mercury award was always about "the best album" on the shortlist - and not the album that sold the most or yielded the most hit singles. Frith talked about how the album concept was still the best format for "linking songs and exploring themes".

And there was only ever one album on the list that held it together so exquisitely. There was a lot of astonishingly good stuff on the albums from Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, Radiohead, and The Last Shadows Puppets, but none formed a complete and thematic set of songs.

Elbow are known as an album band. They've even battled with their record company about releasing individual tracks, and frontman Guy Garvey has gone so far as to claim that iTunes is responsible for "the album dying as an art form". He has called on the online music shop to allow artists to "lock" their albums, ie sell it only as a unit and not as a bunch of individual downloads.

Such a stance may seem prelapsarian, but Garvey's main point is about track listing. A band such as Coldplay will happily confess to you that they put filler on their albums in the knowledge that there are enough big, anthemic songs around the filler that no one will really notice or care. And Chris Martin has fessed up to "borrowing" from Elbow's Grace Under Pressuresong to help him with the writing of Fix You.

For Guy Garvey, the job of track listing is perhaps harder than recording the album itself. Each Elbow album must start with a "statement of intent" song. On The Seldom Seen Kidthey came up with their best: the sublime Starlings. And each subsequent song must fit and, if possible, inform what comes next.

Which is just one reason why Elbow winning the Mercury is a good thing (besides having the best album on the shortlist). With attention spans decreasing due to the instant three-minute fix of iTunes, and with artists now just going for the one big single to propel an album into the charts (how many songs off Adele's record do you know besides Chasing Pavements?), The Seldom Seen Kidis that most quaint of concepts: a great rock album in its entirety. This is something to applaud.

Viva la LP.