Imagine for a moment that the Academy Award best-picture nominees were chosen like the Grammy Award record of the year nominees.
The the nominees for best picture for 2014 would be: “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” “Maleficent,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and “The LEGO Movie.”
Hold your applause.
Yes, the films were
Look at at the Grammys: Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” Sia’s “Chandelier,” Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”
Every single one of these songs appears in the , a chart that combines radio airplay, sales data and streaming data.
And that alone should illustrate the problem with the Grammys: It’s a popularity contest.
This award, record of the year, is the most prestigious that the Recording Academy gives out honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.”
At the 56th Grammys, all nominees for record of the year appeared in the top 15 of Frank Ocean got lucky at the 55th Grammys as the only artist nominated for the award who didn’t appear in the Hot 100 — he lost, though, to Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which was
It’s no secret that the Grammys are partial to commercially successful music, but anyone who respects music and wants to see musicians and the industry thrive should be angry about this.
Let’s look at the Oscars again: The Academy picks movies like Richard Linklater’s indie coming-of-age drama “Boyhood”, which still doesn’t even appear in the top 100 grossing movies of the year. And how many people had heard of “Whiplash” before it was nominated?
This is because ( aside) the Academy makes a decent effort at being a tastemaker rather than a sales chart. The voting body uses its power to highlight movies that it deems have artistic merit that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. This is admirable, what an award should do.
The Grammys boost sales, too. Just before and after the 56th Grammys in 2014, nominees and winners saw But these boosts went to already successful artists such as Katy Perry, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Imagine Dragons.
This isn’t just a problem with the Grammys. All music-focused, nationally televised award shows — the American Music Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, among them — reward popularity ahead of talent. But as the industry’s most prestigious and competitive award, the Grammy program should be exposing the awards show’s 28 million viewers to something new, artists that represent the best in the business, not just the most popular.
Does that mean commercially successful artists are not artistically talented, or deserving of these awards? No. But the list of nominees for this major award gives priority to those that sell a lot of music and concert tickets.
The reasons the program rewards popularity might be found in
“Famous people tend to get more votes from clueless Academy members, regardless of the quality of their work,” Rob Kenner, a voting member of the Recording Academy,
It could be that the Grammy organization fears the award will lose its credibility if fans don’t know the artists nominated. It could be that it is striving to stay relevant by nominating safe acts that won’t challenge the general population.
But even the Grammy winners themselves have sometimes demonstrated little respect for the trophies on their shelves.
“Having won a couple Grammys for stupid (categories) — best metal performance — it’s hard to feel good about the integrity of that. If that’s how much you’re paying attention to what you’re giving out, why should I think that really means anything?” Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor “When the Oscar [nomination] came up, it felt very different. I can’t tell if that’s because I’m older or it felt like it’s coming from a more sincere pedigree…”
Reznor has won two Grammys for Nine Inch Nails and an Oscar for best original score for “The Social Network.” Jay-Z and Kanye West, who have a combined 40 Grammys, have both spoken out about the awards.
“The Grammys and all of those other things, they’re fine and it’s a good way for everyone to get together amongst their peers and collect some trophies at the end of the night, but my whole thing is for the people, as long as the people accept it — that’s my real Grammy,” Jay-Z
No matter what it is, the Grammys need to become something closer to a critic’s pick.
So where can you actually find these lists of the year’s best music? An excellent place to start is with the year-end lists published by critics at most major publications ( ). And if all those individual lists are too much to keep track of, there’s a shortcut: Every year, The Village Voice polls hundreds of music critics, asking for their top 10 albums and tracks of the year. It compiles these into the , which has been published for more than 40 years. (Full disclosure: .)
acts like Run the Jewels, FKA Twigs, Angel Olsen, Sturgill Simpson, Spoon and many other artists who are largely unknown to casual music fans or mainstream audiences. While they might be lesser-known than Azalea, more than 600 music critics would agree that Pazz & Jop’s top 10 artists have more to offer than the “Fancy” singer. But it’s not completely foreign territory to pop fans: Taylor Swift and D’Angelo are on the best albums list. This isn’t to say the Pazz & Jop Poll gives a definitive account of the year’s “best” music, but it gives listeners a more talented batch of musicians to pick from.
Which is more than the Grammys can claim.
Matt Miller: 303-954-1785, mrmiller@denverpost.com
