By Josh Hughes
DAMN. This mess again?
“It’s easy! If a woman is as qualified as a man for the same job, boom, you know? That’s it!” said Raul Malo, frontman for The Mavericks, during a pre-Grammys interview on the red carpet two Sundays ago. One single woman ended up winning a televised award at this year’s “biggest night in music,” the 60th Grammy Awards Show.
Every year the Grammy Awards slip further away from retaining any relevance in the music industry they once had, yet every year they still manage to upset everyone.
I remember jumping with joy as a 14 year old when Arcade Fire took home “Album of the Year” in 2010, and I remember being let down ever since. It even took me a few years to realize the problems with a predominantly white band being the highlight Grammy winner of my lifetime.
I remember writing an angry Facebook post after Kendrick Lamar’s cultural landmark To Pimp A Butterfly lost to Taylor Swift’s 1989 in 2014. I don’t remember the dozens of forgetful performances by washed up, irrelevant musicians I’ve seen on the Grammys over the years.
The last few years I haven’t even thought it worthwhile to watch the show— all I need to do is watch a couple highlight performances on Youtube and get upset about the latest controversy.
This all begs the question of ‘what was different this year?’ If the Grammys have lost all touch with the contemporary state of music criticism, why should we pay any attention to it, why should we validate their power over the industry?
The truth is, the Grammys still dictate popular culture, and the narrative of the “biggest night in music” permeates the music business. No one at SONY cares if you get a 9/10 on The Needle Drop, they care if you win Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. With no alternative to look to, it remains disheartening to see so many female artists and artists of color ignored in favor of safe, “traditional” pop.
This year Bruno Mars walked away with the most awards, including Album of The Year. This marks the first time a person of color has won the award since Herbie Hancock in 2008.
Since 2008, there have been 19 nominations in the category for people of color, and it took a fairly conventional pop musician to break that streak and win. That’s not to say that 24K Magic is a bad record, though it holds the lowest score (70) of all the nominated albums on Metacritic, a music review aggregator site. What matters is that the record with the least amount of cultural impact took the prize, especially over a certain rapper who was also nominated.
Kendrick Lamar has now lost Album of the Year three times over since 2012. First to Daft Punk, second to Taylor Swift, and now to Bruno Mars. The argument to be had here is not one of subjectivity, it’s about cultural influence and being able to read the damn room.
If the Grammys were run similarly to the Oscars (which still has their share of problems), winners and nominees would be decided largely by criticism within the field. Two of the three of Lamar’s nominated albums, for instance, hold the highest aggregate score of their respective years on another review aggregate site. Hell, if the Grammys were even determined by sheer popularity, this year’s nominee DAMN. sold more units than any other nomination. The issue runs deeper than the awards show simply being out of touch; it suggests a racist, sexist organization that refuses to adopt a 21st century view towards arts and culture.
The issues go much farther than just Album of the Year. Despite the promising list of nominees, only one woman walked away with a major award: Alessia Cara.
Lorde, nominated for Album of the Year, allegedly did not get offered a performance slot. Instead, we got to hear from extremely contemporary and relevant artists Sting and Shaggy.
Kesha gave an excellent performance of “Praying”, a song about breaking out of the grasp of her producer and abuser Dr. Luke, yet no specific context for the importance of the performance was given all night.
Only Janelle Monae, who presented the song, got anywhere close to vividly expressing its potency in our current times. Oh yeah, and Ed Sheeran beat out four women in one category, and three in another. If the Grammys also believe in Raul Malo’s statement that men and women should be equally qualified, I guess women just released bad music this year.
Except they didn’t. The narrative that the Recording Academy stands behind simply favors pop music that comes from a safe, largely-white realm.
One producer for the awards show expressed his sadness over Taylor Swift’s “off cycle” year, hoping that her return next year would “up women winners”. She’s exactly what the Grammys adore, a young blonde songwriter with seemingly inoffensive lyrics and an easily digestible style. Artists like Beyonce, Rihanna, and 2017’s darling SZA have all had attention from the Grammys, but none of them walk away with the biggest, most boldfaced awards.
The harsh truth is that the Recording Academy does not take R&B or rap music seriously, as shown in the last ten years of the awards show. To quote a strikingly good tweet from Kanye West last year, “We need to see Young Thug at the Grammys. Not just me and Jay in a suit.” We need more people of color and more womxn represented, and not just through the watered down, dated lens of traditional pop music.
So here we find ourselves again, another year nagging on an award show that we increasingly say we don’t care about. At the very least, the show went down 10 million viewers since last year, and an increasing amount of relevant musician celebrities were absent from the evening. But still, where does that get us?
Besides being another indirect plea to the Recording Academy to hop out of their grave, this article does nothing for the music culture that deserves recognition and celebration. That part relies on you, reader— to listen to, talk about, spread and support the underrepresented artists and musicians you love. Maybe one day I won’t wake up to a Twitter feed of upset Jay-Z and SZA fans, because maybe one day the Grammys won’t exist anymore. Next year if I see one more Taylor Swift acceptance speech for another “breakthrough” pop album, we might be closer to that day than I imagine.