2025 Mercury Prize Emma-Jean Thackray - ‘Weirdo’
DIY’s definitive guide to the 2025 Mercury Prize shortlist.
Few albums in recent memory are a study in such beautiful and compelling contrasts as Emma-Jean Thackray’s ‘Weirdo’. Crafted in the aftermath of an unfathomable personal loss, while also meditating on neurodivergence, this eclectic jazz-funk hybrid album will knock you gently sideways with its striking combination of pained lyrics and buoyant music.
Thackray describes being shortlisted for the 2025 Mercury Prize as “bucket list sh*t”. It’s the latest in ‘Weirdo’’s growing line of impressive achievements, such as scoring big name guest features like Reggie Watts, working with Gilles Peterson’s esteemed label Brownswood Recordings and performing at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. However, as she explains here, hearing from fans who’ve connected with the album’s complex themes is “all she could ever hope for”. A thoughtful, honest reminder of what music is fundamentally all about from an intelligent and singular British musician.
What was your initial reaction to finding you’d been shortlisted for the 2025 Mercury Prize and have your feelings changed in any way since?
It’s obviously such an honour. I think it’s the most important music prize in the world, because it’s very much not about commerciality; it’s about the art. But it’s also complicated. The album is the best work I’ve ever done, but it also came from a hugely difficult place. So lots of complex feelings going on.
Were you at all surprised by the reception to ‘Weirdo’? Did people get it in the way you imagined?
I didn’t really do much imagining, to be honest. When I made the record I was just thinking about myself; what I need to say and make. I forgot that other people were going to listen to it. When they did, the response was great. I’ve had messages from people saying it’s been really important to them and has helped them access their own grief and with other things like neurodivergence and queerness; things that have made them feel ‘othered’. That’s all I could ever hope for; creating a gang of weirdos and bringing us all together.
“All I could ever hope for [is] creating a gang of weirdos and bringing us all together.”
The album does a great job of balancing challenging subject matter with very buoyant music. Was that an easy or difficult tonal line to walk?
It was quite natural for me because I’m a person of extremes. My mood is very up or very down. My approach to life is about finding the balance. With music, if you’re playing something mad and complex, you have to have a groove to lock it down and marry the cerebral with the visceral. Then if you’re going to sing about something heavy you have to balance it with a bounce and a groove.
There’s so many different genre styles being blended together across ‘Weirdo’. Do you think of yourself as a jazz musician or just a musician?
My background is heavily based in jazz. It’s definitely something I do, but it’s like ‘jazz plus’. I think of jazz as being a language, it’s not really a style. I’m using this language to say many things. I’m not really thinking about doing a grunge track or whatever kind of track; it’s just all natural because I love so many different types of music. It’s always honest, it’s never contrived.
DIY has teamed up with LNER - the Official Travel Partner of the 2025 Mercury Prize Newcastle - to celebrate the power of journeys, both musical and literal. Read our full 2025 Mercury Prize Newcastle special edition below.
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