I don’t listen to the radio. As Mancunian legends The Smiths moaned, 40 years ago, “it says nothing to me about my life”. When they complained about the lack of personal representation, however, there remained at least an anti-mainstream movement that still aired bands like The Smiths and their fellow alternative voices, singing from the marginal areas of the British Isles. Now, it feels like we’re living back in the 1960s with only a few paltry minutes of non-conforming music a day. And then, regional voices tend to be banished to the regional radio stations. Institutions like the BBC are restricting the spread of music from the margins, and we don’t even have a substantial pirate radio culture to help combat it.

Two years ago, the Mercury Prize was receiving criticism for the fact that a decade had elapsed since an act originating from outside of London had won the award. 2024 bucked the trend, with Leeds’ English Teacher taking home the prize, followed by Sam Fender the following year. However, when you have had such an extended implementation of favouritism, the eventual retraction is eclipsed by questions of did they win it because they were northern? English Teacher is a brave, innovative band performing the same kinds of musical experiments that have historically forged new genres. Sam Fender’s beautiful ‘Remember My Name’ is rebelliously northern in featuring a colliery band, yet heart-warmingly empathetic in its reflection on the singer’s family. The two most recent winners are truly breaking new ground in their style, but so many other names are also forging their own paths, and finding no recognition at all.

“If we hear a regional accent on TV or radio, chances are that it is from somewhere within the M25”

The Mercury Prize is symptomatic of a growing London-centric outlook within the music industry. At the moment, if we hear a regional accent on TV or radio, chances are that it is from somewhere within the M25. At best, they’re from the South-East.

Despite having released one (or, arguably, two) UK Number One albums, The Reytons from Rotherham have appeared very rarely on the BBC, and almost always on Look North, the local news for those in Yorkshire and Humberside. Unlike their neighbours, the Arctic Monkeys (from Sheffield), The Reytons have not allowed for their accents to wane over their three albums and multiple EPs and singles. In June 2024, they managed to attract 20,000 fans to their home-town for a massive gig in Clifton Park, and yet they remain (at least in the mainstream) a non-entity.

This is not just a problem in England, but in the UK more generally. Scotland and Wales are producing some incredible new talent – The Royston Club, Walt Disco and Shambolics to name but a few – and yet, they are facing the same anonymity as many northern bands. I am seeing very little from Northern Ireland, likely because they are not getting the TV or radio promotion that would, once, have introduced me to them.

“Pulp’s track reminds us of the resilience of the regional working-class identity”

Scottish indie innovator, Hamish Hawk, was getting a little attention a few years ago, but even he seems to have been brushed aside again, like the rest of his genre. His frank, witty lyrics have been compared to the likes of The Smiths and The Divine Comedy, but the truth is that nothing that has come before can quite define what Hawk is doing now. His lyrics evoke “a Glaswegian chapel” alongside “a Parisian Library,” ennobling the Scottish city’s architecture in a synaesthetic exploration of his cathedral-building (or, rather, “writ[ing]”) ambitions. Calling a lyricist ‘poetic’ has lost a lot of its meaning, but with Hawk it is true. Across his career, his lyrics have developed a wry bite that sometimes conceals a very personal undertone. I reject the idea that he is the ‘new Morrissey’ or the ‘next Neil Hannon’ as reductive, except insofar as the fact that all three have carved their own indelible mark into songwriting and have the potential to change both music and literature more generally.

“But what does it matter?” some say. Artists can always move to the city and carve their name into the London-centric narrative that way.

But it does matter. One of Pulp’s more neglected tracks, and my personal favourite, is ‘The Last Day of the Miners’ Strike’. For anyone from a working-class region – and not only a mining area, but any industry susceptible to the whims of privatisation – the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike was a turning point that still defines our identities. It carved a sense of community in the face of hopelessness. But as these communities have faded, over the last decade or more, so too has the interest in creatives from outside of London. But Pulp’s track reminds us of the resilience of the regional working-class identity. In focussing on London and the South-East, radio stations and TV channels are only creating a sense of apathy that is turning people to live music and (sadly) streaming. As Jarvis Cocker says, “Once more, the North is rising” – or, at the very least, the northern and non-English music industry, through The K’s, The Lottery Winners and so many more.