Jacob Alon’s Mercury Prize nomination is a win for industry outsiders
Each year, when the Mercury Award nominations come in, an annoying choir of voices spark up. It’s the cynical crowd, the crowd that loves to yell ‘industry plant’ at any new name they don’t know or don’t trust. Given that Jacob Alon’s debut single only came out in September 2024, they’d be an early target – but don’t you dare.
When we talk about the music industry being broken, a talent like Alon is exactly the type of artist we talk about being lost. Born in Fife and raised by a single mother on the border between a housing estate and a forest — it’s not the context the music industry often goes looking in. With every passing day, the industry becomes more and more city-centric, kids outside of London, or maybe Manchester, struggle more and more to get a look in.
As Alon’s mother didn’t exactly support their blossoming musical dreams in a household where top 40 music was the be-all and end-all in a realm miles and miles away from their own, there was no support or lessons. Instead, there was only a dusty guitar from a forgotten cupboard, YouTube tutorials, and friends with an education in Nick Drake and David Bowie to pass on the gospel.
There was an attempt to assimilate as Alon tried to let the niggling dream of making art drop to instead do a medical degree. But anyone with any level of creative desire knows that really, there is no quitting it. So they quit university instead, twice, and took to the pubs, cafes and local venues that have nurtured generation after generation of people like Alon – of young people with a desire to make music in a world where their music is rarely heard, rarely platformed, and definitely rarely awarded a Mercury Nomination.
But here we are. It feels like Alon has brushed up against every single one of the things we talk about as boulders that utterly block access to achievements like this. They had no support getting a musical education, no family to open doors. They tried to do the big move to London that musicians often feel forced to do, but within a reality so many working class creatives know, they couldn’t make it work under cripple rent prices and the mental health impact survival culture has. They also had to face up to the pain of being ostracised by their family for being non-binary, adding a whole new battle.
But week by week at a local open mic session as folk clubs in Edinburgh, the songs that make up In Limerance were crafted, and in a rare and affirming reminder that sometimes the music world works as it should, people started paying attention.
Maybe it was Alon’s angelic vocals, maybe it was the unique poetry of their songwriting, or the gorgeous guitar that weaves between traditional folk and modern alternative, sitting somewhere between Nick Drake and Adrianne Lenker. Who’s to say what first got the powers at be to notice, but the victory is that they did. And in a world where we rant endlessly about how broken these things are, the wins should be celebrated with joy – and Alon’s presence amongst far more established acts on this prestigious list, that’s a win for all the kids with YouTube guitar tutorials and a dream.
