Jake Bugg has recently admitted that he was “quite pleased” that he didn’t win this year’s Mercury Music Prize.
“I was quite pleased that I didn’t win the Mercury because I was quite drunk and I didn’t want to go on that stage and make a speech, to be honest.”
In an interview with the BBC, the Nottingham singer-songwriter said that he was actually glad that he lost out on the gong to James Blake due to the fact that he was “quite drunk” and wouldn’t have wanted to make an acceptance speech in such an inebriated state.
When asked for his thoughts on Blake and his album ‘Overgrown‘, Bugg said: “I didn’t particularly enjoy his performance at the Mercury Awards. But I could see that he’s talented. I was quite pleased that I didn’t win the Mercury because I was quite drunk and I didn’t want to go on that stage and make a speech, to be honest.”
Bugg also spoke his new studio album ‘Shangri La‘, which is due for release on November 18, admitting that he had felt under pressure to follow-up his debut album. “Of course I was worried about it because I wanted to maintain everything that I’ve achieved,” he said. “But I managed to drift away from worrying about it and just carried on doing what I do, which is write the songs. And fortunately the songs came. I didn’t really plan on it coming this quick but I’m very happy that the songs came like they did.”
With ‘Shangri La‘ set to come out one week before One Direction‘s new LP ‘Midnight Memories‘, he said: “I’ve seen that One Direction’s album is out the week after mine. So the question is, ‘Do I wanna be Number One or not?’ Cos if it does go to Number One that means they’ll knock me off the top spot. I mean, what can you say? ‘Yeah yeah, ha ha, they knocked you off’.’ I mean, it would be nice to have another but you can’t get greedy now, can you?”
