Jessie Buckley, Sam Fender, Harry Styles and more nominated for Mercury Prize

Kerry native Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler have earned a Mercury Prize nomination for their 2022 collaborative album For All Our Days That Tear The Heart.

The pair will compete against the likes of Wet Leg's self-titled No.1 debut, Self Esteem (Prioritise Pleasure), Little Simz (Sometimes I Might Be Introvert), Joy Crookes' Skin, Sam Fender (Seventeen Going Under), Kojey Radical's Reason To Smile, Gwenno (Tresor), Harry Styles' smash hit Harry’s House, Nova Twins (SuperNova) and Yard Act's The Overload.

The Shortlist for the 2022 Mercury Prize with @FreeNow_UK has been revealed! 🏆⚡️@fergusmccreadie@gwennosaunders@Harry_Styles@buckleyxbutler@JoyCrookes@KojeyRadical@LittleSimz@NovaTwinsMusic@SamFenderMusic@SELFESTEEM___ @wetlegband@YardActBand#MercuryPrize pic.twitter.com/VbIV8nubON

— Mercury Prize (@MercuryPrize) July 26, 2022

According to Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler's album's description, the pair's friendship grew from "an unlikely shared love of Killarney and the small island of Valentia where Bernard would go on holiday as a boy."

Bernard, whose parents originally come from Dun Laoghaire, had previously seen Jessie perform a song on an American chat show, in promotion of 2018’s Wild Rose.

“I remember clocking just how much character there was in her voice and how freely she expressed it,” the former Suede guitarist recalls.

‘The Eagle and the Dove’ was the first song the pair wrote together. Named after a book by the interwar proto-feminist writer Vita Sackville-West, the song set the tone for the project.

In his review for Hot Press, Will Butler wrote of the album: "Even just on paper, Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler, is a compelling combination. One an astonishing Oscar-nominated actor, the other arguably the most influential guitarist of his generation: what could go wrong?. Thankfully, this wonderfully mysterious record rises to its star billing. It is very special."

32-year-old Irish star Jessie Buckley has risen through the Hollywood ranks, earning an Academy Award nomination for her role in The Lost Daughter alongside Olivia Colman and turns in Judy, HBO miniseries Chernobyl (2019), Fargo (2020) and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020).

Buckley also starred as Sally Bowles in a West End revival of Cabaret last year, for which she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Last year, London singer-songwriter Arlo Parks won the prestigious Mercury Prize award for her stunning debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams.

The poetic artist (real name Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho) faced stiff competition for the 2021 edition of the award, beating Wolf Alice, Celeste, Black Country New Road and Mogwai amongst others.

"I am completely speechless. I don't have the words. I just want to say a big thank you to my family. My mum and my dad are somewhere in the room today," they said in her acceptance speech. "It took a lot of sacrifice and hard work to get here and there were moments where I wasn’t sure whether I would make it through – but I am here today so thank you very much."

Michael Kiwanuka won 2020's Mercury Prize for his self-titled record Kiwanuka, and was featured on the judging panel for last year's ceremony alongside Irish BBC Radio 1 DJ and author Annie Mac, Jamie Cullum and Anna Calvi.