Who will be the punch line come Monday?
Will it be a pop singer who had the misfortune to be nominated alongside a critically acclaimed rapper? A deceased rock legend who defeats a more deserving and relevant young talent? A miscategorized winner whose innocent acceptance speech will land like lead to an audience of side-eyed cynics?
Every year, it's someone. Over the past 60 years, the Grammy Awards, which take place Sunday night in New York City, have a deserved reputation for ignoring the great and rewarding the so-so, making them the biggest running joke of any trophy show this side of the Cable Aces. Every year, the Grammys seem to find new ways to out-Grammy themselves, producing one head-scratching result after another.
Remember when Jethro Tull won the inaugural hard rock/metal Grammy over Metallica? Or when alt-country singer Shelby Lynne won Best New Artist a mere six albums into her career? Or when Led Zeppelin, which had never received a competitive Grammy — yeah, let that sink in — finally won in 2012 for a live album recorded in 2007? Or when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis topped Kendrick Lamar for Best Rap Album in 2014, an outcome for which Macklemore himself felt the need to publicly apologize?
You don't even need to go back that far. Just look at the past three races for Album of the Year:
2015: Beck's fine, placid Morning Phase upset Beyoncé's superior Beyoncé, viewed at the time as her best album to date. Among those who cried foul was Kanye West, and for once, he was right.
2016: Taylor Swift won her second Album of the Year trophy for the commercial phenomenon that was 1989. But Kendrick Lamar's breathless, poetic To Pimp a Butterfly topped almost every year-end best-of list and remains this decade's highest-rated pop album on MetaCritic. It was robbed.
2017: Instead of delivering Beyoncé (Lemonade) a richly deserved make-good for her Grammy snub two years prior, the Recording Academy instead awarded it to Adele (25) for the second time in six years. If you're scoring at home, that means Adele and Swift have won half the Album of the Year races since 2010.
These three races encapsulate so much of what usually makes the Grammy Awards' top races so frustrating: a tendency to reward white artists over black, pop and rock over R&B and hip-hop, chart success over critical acclaim. Outcomes like these have led artists like Drake and Frank Ocean to decry the Grammys and decline to submit their work for consideration, undermining the entire process.
To its credit, the Recording Academy has admitted it has a problem, and over the past decade has tinkered with its voting formula to address it, downsizing the number of categories, encouraging voters to cast votes in more genres and allowing artists to submit streaming-only works. These changes have yielded some positive results, such as Chance the Rapper's three wins in 2017, and laudable nominees in genres like Alternative, Urban Alternative, Dance/Electronic and Americana.
This year brings one major change designed to address the academy's many failures: For the first time, all 13,000 voting members of the Recording Academy cast ballots online, a move designed to encourage younger voters and touring musicians to participate. There are early signs it has had a positive effect: Of the 20 lead nominees in the top four categories, 16 are people of color — including, for the first time, all five nominees for Record of the Year.
Still, who wants to bet the Grammys can make it through a single ceremony without viewers crying highway robbery at least once? Not me.
Here are nine(ish) categories I'll be watching to see how the Grammys will Grammy things up this year.
Album of the Year
The Grammyest choice: Bruno Mars, 24K Magic. The only thing the Grammys love more than a comeback album by an aging white rocker is a transcendent pop star, and Mars fits the bill. But it wouldn't be the most problematic choice. A win by Lorde's Melodrama, a wonderful album that deserves every bit of its praise, would unfortunately fit squarely within the Grammys' long history of celebrating white ingenues over rap and R&B performers. But the worst choice would be Jay-Z's 4:44. Honoring an all-time legend for a solid late-career album is a very Grammy move, but can you imagine the outrage if Jay took home the big prize only a year after Beyoncé's big snub? Especially considering Jay's (allegedly) philandering ways were (allegedly) what inspired Lemonade in the first place? Talk about an awkward acceptance speech.
The right choice: Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. It's no To Pimp a Butterfly or Good Kid, m.A.A.d City, but Lamar's third opus yielded a much-deserved third Album of the Year nomination. Only two hip-hop albums have ever won the top prize — Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill — and we're overdue for a third. Lamar is unquestionably the rapper (and perhaps the overall songwriter) of the moment. His time has come.
Record of the Year
The Grammyest choice: Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber's Despacito. It's hard to argue against it as the year's biggest pop hit, which would fall in line with recent winners like Hello, Uptown Funk and Get Lucky. But never forget how much the Grammys love, love, LOVE Bruno Mars. 24K Magic is a limp hit but strong trophy contender.
The right choice: Despacito. I see you, HUMBLE.-lovers, but hear me out. Despacito, which already won this trophy at the Latin Grammys, would make history by becoming the first primarily non-English song to win Record of the Year since Domenico Modugno's Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare) at the very first Grammys in 1958. If the Grammys really want to shake up how they're seen, this is a good way to start.e_SClB
Song of the Year
The Grammyest choice: Jay-Z's 4:44. It's hard to believe, but a rap song has never won the industry's top songwriting honor. In 2017, Jay-Z became the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, so honoring his legacy here for this confessional apology to Beyoncé feels like a safe way for the Grammys to make amends. It's a nice gesture, it's just not the right gesture.
The right choice: Logic, Alessia Cara and Khalid's 1-800-273-8255. Here's a rap song crafted by three of pop and hip-hop's top up-and-coming talents, one that addresses teenage suicide and depression so head-on that calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — the digits spelled out in the song's title — exploded in 2017. It may sound preachy, but there's no telling how many lives this song has saved, a remarkable testament to a songwriter's power to influence a generation.e_SClB
Best New Artist
The Grammyest choice: Alessia Cara. Nothing against her; she's talented and has a great resume. But that's exactly the point: Even judging going by the Grammys' always confusing eligibility period (Oct. 1 to Sept. 30), Cara's big breakthrough came two years ago, not last year. This year, her output has been a single with Zedd and a feature on Logic's 1-800-273-8255. Eligibility obfuscation, I say!
The right choice: Lil Uzi Vert. SZA and Khalid produced two of the year's most acclaimed albums. But Uzi had a crazy commercial rise in 2017 — beyond smashes XO Tour Llif3 and Migos' Bad and Boujee, he charted an astonishing 17 songs on the Billboard Hot 100. Picking him would honor the year's trend toward darker, more introspective hip-hop, and help course-correct the Grammys' traditional dismissal of the genre in its top four categories.
Best Urban Contemporary Album
The Grammyest choice: The Weeknd. Established in 2013, this has become one of the Grammys' most exciting yet confusing categories. It aspires to celebrate forward-thinking hip-hop and R&B that incorporates elements of rock, dance and futuristic pop, yet most of its winners have been A-listers like Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Rihanna and, yes, the Weeknd. Honoring him again for the poppy Starboy wouldn't be the nudge left of center this lively category deserves.
The right choice: SZA (Ctrl) and Khalid (American Teen) are both nominated for Best New Artist, and Childish Gambino (Awaken, My Love!) is nominated for Album and Record of the Year. All three produced great, unconventional albums that represent the best of what this category can be.
Best Rock Performance/Song
The Grammyest choice: Leonard Cohen (You Want It Darker) or Chris Cornell (The Promise), a year after giving both categories to David Bowie. Are we that bereft of living rockers worthy of a Grammy, beyond perpetually nominated veterans like Foo Fighters (Run) and Metallica (Atlas, Rise!)? As if we needed further proof rock was dead in the eyes of the industry.
The right choice: Any first-time winner. With Portugal. The Man's Feel It Still relegated to the pop field, the most deserving Best Rock Song is K.Flay's snappy, excellent Blood in the Cut. Tabbing No Good by Icelandic blues-rockers Kaleo for Best Rock Performance would be a fine way to bless some new blood.
Best Pop Vocal Album
The Grammyest choice: Coldplay's Kaleidoscope EP or Imagine Dragons' Evolve. No wonder the rock categories are floundering — all the Grammys' favorite rock bands are now considered pop, at a time when we already have plenty of pop artists doing a bangup job.
The right choice: Kesha's Rainbow. A good case can be made for likely winner Ed Sheeran. But after 12 months of women's marches and #MeToo, no victory would resonate more than Kesha's first-ever win after her yearslong struggle for creative emancipation. It would be a worthy winner, too.
Best Rap/Sung Performance
The Grammyest choice: Jay-Z and Beyoncé's Family Feud. What would it say about the Grammys if, a year after her shocking Album of the Year loss for Lemonade, their consolation prize is a trophy for her mostly wordless wailing on a song by the (allegedly) cheating hubby who inspired it? Although maybe if they show up to accept it together, it might be worth all the awkwardness.
The right choice: Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna's LOYALTY. is the obvious fallback, but a vote for Love Galore by SZA and Travis Scott would hit closer to the bull's-eye of new-school collaboration this category is coming to represent.
Best Rap Performance
The Grammyest choice: Jay-Z's 4:44, although in truth the probable winner is Lamar's huge hit HUMBLE. Which isn't a bad choice; it's just that in the reality the rest of us live in, the two biggest hip-hop songs of the year were …
The right choice : Cardi B's Bodak Yellow or the song that probably deserves to win, Bad and Boujee by Migos and Lil Uzi Vert. And if Cardi B doesn't win here, fret not: Thanks to the Grammys' bizarre eligibility rules — see Alessia Cara, above — she's the early frontrunner for Best New Artist in 2019.
Best Country Song
The Grammyest choice: Taylor Swift, obviously. At least the Country Music Association already screwed this one up first, naming Swift's Better Man, penned for Little Big Town, their song of the year, ahead of several more deserving Nashville songwriters. Star-baiting like that is expected at the Grammys, but the CMAs? For shame.
The right choice: Midland's Drinkin' Problem. Each of the remaining artists had a hand in writing their own hits — Sam Hunt's Body Like a Back Road, Miranda Lambert's Tin Man and Chris Stapleton's Broken Halos — bud Midland's instant jukebox classic, co-written with pro's pros Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, was the true country song of the year.
Contact Jay Cridlin at [email protected] or (727) 893-8336. Follow @JayCridlin.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar