Ever heard of the Polar Music Prize? Me neither, until today.
Launched in 1989 by ABBA's lyricist, publisher and manager Stig Anderson, it has awarded fat sums for cultural influentials as diverse as Led Zeppelin and Gyorgy Ligeti. Today, the Polar announced that Pink Floyd and Renee Fleming were next in line to land envelopes stuffed with $168,000 US dollars, as well as the blessing of Sweden's musical establishment.
Sorta. The Polar is named after Anderson's music label, which is now beneath the Universal Music Group's vast umbrella, and was until this year administered by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. But they pulled out because, according to the Associated Press, the Polar "was taking up too much of the academy's time." So much for the imprimatur.
this audio or video is no longer availableBut whatever, $168,000 is a lot of dough. Now all Floyd has to do is decide who gets what. Syd Barrett died in 2006, and Roger Waters has been estranged from the band for years. But without those two, there never would have been a band who, as the Polar citation argued, was "foremost in shaping the sounds that would influence artists forever."
I'll leave it for David Gilmour to sort out in Floyd's classic Dark Side of the Moon tune, "Money."
Photo: Wikipedia
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