A Short Rant About the Grammys

I did not watch the Grammys. I was not even tempted to—something about a bunch of prima-donnas gathering for an orgy of self-congratulation doesn’t do it for me. Of course, it’s got nothing on the Oscars for triggering the gag reflex, but it’s still not the way I want to spend an evening.

Out of curiosity I checked the lists of winners a few days later. When it comes to categories I follow, all I can do is shrug. Or maybe laugh at how irrelevant the Grammys have become. I’ll focus here on the category about which I write the most: rock music.

Disclaimer: I am more familiar with certain genres of music than with others. So, I don’t really have opinions on many of the categories covered by the Grammies. My guess is that some of the same patterns apply. Here, from the L.A. Times, is a summary of the evening which suggests that they do:

• Beyoncé entered the night with 11 nominations and a quest to finally win album of the year.

• Other top nominees included Charli XCX (seven), Billie Eilish (seven), Post Malone (seven), Sabrina Carpenter (six), Chappell Roan (six) and Taylor Swift (six), but it was Kendrick Lamar who walked away the big winner,

The overall impression I have is that the Grammys are winner-take-all. Whoever the voters decide they want to reward gets multiple nominations, and everyone else is shut out.

With thousands of artists to choose from, there is no justification for a handful racking up all the nominations. I’ll focus here on rock, but I’d be interested in your thoughts, for example, on the country or hip-hop awards.

With rock, this year’s Grammys are problematic in many ways. First, a little context: Much has been made of how rock has been sidelined and is now a niche category. The “rock is dead” meme regularly makes the rounds in the rock community, including the music press.

Maybe the Grammy voters (members of the Recording Academy) have internalized the message. How else do you explain that most of their nominees in the three “rock” categories would qualify for elder-care benefits (if they are even alive)?

The winner of the “Best Rock Performance” was the Beatles, who disbanded more than 50 years ago. I love the Beatles. They are my favorite band of all time. Still, “Now and Then” is not a great song. Sorry, I’m just being honest. It’s nice, but not something I’ll go out of my way to play again. This was obviously a choice driven by sentiment and nothing more.

One of the runners-up in the category is not even a rock song. This is “Broken Man” by St. Vincent. I consider this pick a whiff. St. Vincent is a prodigiously talented musician, performer and songwriter, and has done some great, cutting-edge stuff, for example this from five years ago:

But “Broken Man” is neither her best work nor is it even rock. And it doesn’t feature her real calling card, which is her prowess on the guitar. What is it doing here? Rock is a guitar-centric form of music!

That makes the next category even stranger: “Best Rock Song.” What do you know? The winner is: “Broken Man.” WTF? This song, and the album of which it is a part, also won in two other categories, including one that makes a little more sense (“Best Alternative Music Performance”).

The voters had thousands of artists and hundreds of thousands of songs to choose from. There were certainly a lot that would be a better fit for “Best Rock Song”. You already gave “Broken Man” and its album the “Alternative” awards. Surely there are other songs worthy of consideration for the “Rock” award.

St. Vincent has won Grammys before, so it’s not like the committee was trying to rectify a previous slight. No, this seems like a lack of imagination.

Note that again, two of the runners up in this category have been around for over 30 years.

It’s not that older groups can’t do good stuff. I have nothing against the elderly--I’m an old fart myself! But there are a lot of younger bands doing great stuff. Like this remarkable group of teenagers from Ukraine:

This band is just getting started. They are young and unknown. I hardly expect them to be on the short list for a Grammy—yet. But in a few years, if they are still together, they should be serious contenders. It’s not like you have to give them a handicap, either.

Will they be contenders? The Grammy nominating process makes it unlikely. They probably won’t even make it to the Academy’s radar screen. The problem is, if you don't recognize and reward this kind of talent and work, you are making the “rock is dead” meme self-fulfilling.

The real killer here is The “Best Rock Album” award. The Rolling Stones? Really? With this, I question whether the members of the committee actually listen to rock music.

Coming back to the question I opened with: Three bands made the lists of finalists in all three of these categories, and one act made two lists. What’s wrong with that? Well, for one thing, that crowds out a whole lot of other artists. Among the three lists, there was room for some 18 artists. It is not plausible that four acts deserve eleven of these spots. Even the Beatles in their prime would have a hard time pulling that off.

The most plausible explanation is that the judges are choosing from restricted lists to start with. It’s a process that rewards familiarity and politics. That also helps explain why so many of the finalists have been there multiple times, going back decades. Are these “lifetime achievement” awards? If so, they should be labelled such and given their own spot in the program.

Or maybe it’s sheer laziness and a lack of interest in the subject. Anyone truly interested in a genre of music would be struggling to cut their list of finalists down to only 18 acts. The Grammy voters seem to have the opposite problem: they can’t even think of 18 worthy rock bands. There is no excuse for that. We have individual writers here on substack who write about more than that every month.

It has long been a criticism of awards organizations like the Oscars and the Grammys that they serve mainly to validate established stars, with a bias toward the ones generating money. Breaking through is hard, even more so in an art form that is struggling for oxygen. In the case of rock, it seems as though the Grammys are happy to help it die.

Postscript:

The list published by the LA Times certainly suggests that the “cool kids” table is pretty exclusive. It’s hard to get in, but once you do, you get to hog all the party invitations. What do you think? Do you see similar issues in other genres of music you follow closely?