Sure, more traditional pop artists like , and were nominated, but leaned toward alternative music.
Gotye, with his ubiquitous (and ) anthem about a mean ex-girlfriend, beat and for record of the year, while song of the year nominees Kelly Clarkson, Carly Rae Jepsen and ’s hopes were dashed by the world’s most successful wannabe Queen tribute band,
Pop artists were totally shut out of the album of the year category, and even in the categories devoted solely to it, traditional pop didn’t fare too well. ’s live recording of “Set Fire to the Rain” beat out more poppy offerings by Katy Perry, Rihanna and Kelly Clarkson, and best pop duo/group performance was won by Gotye rather than (not complaining about that one) or .
Ironically, this year’s poppiest winner (other than Kelly Clarkson for best pop vocal album) was in the best rap album category, which went to (or, if you’re one of the cool kids, ”).
Ignoring 2012 (a.k.a. the year that Adele basically won the Grammys), 2011’s show saw awards for poppier artists like , and , while 2010 was the year that will forever go down in history as the year Taylor Swift won album of the year (.
That same year, awards also went to Beyonce, Jason Mraz, — artists that are a bit more traditionally top-40 friendly than winners like Mumford and Sons (even though your little sister listens to them).
Hopefully with this year’s anticipated releases from , more traditional pop music will be able to retake some of the glory at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
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Pop music blogger Allison Sylte is a Fort Collins-based writer and regular contributor to Reverb.
