Who Exactly Are the Grammys For?
Who exactly are the Grammys for? I’m not referencing the actual awards here, because as last night’s show proved handily, Grammy winners are mostly an inexplicable assortment of random rockers and adult-contemporary-approved top 40 acts. I mean who exactly is the audience that the contemporary Grammy Awards show imagines they’re appealing to?
Last night’s telecast, the Recording Academy’s 57th installment of the Grammy Awards, seemed to reach a new level of remoteness. Indeed, almost everything that happened inside the Staples Center felt oddly detached from what defines modern popular music in terms of winners, sounds and, perhaps most troublingly, entertainment. They’re still calling this a “show,” right?
Over the span of a patience-eviscerating three hours and forty minutes, the Grammys were marred in an endless parade of performances that self-consciously strived for “seriousness.” This solemnity has become a Grammy tradition, one where delivering a maudlin ballad is tantamount to an artist proving their musical chops and earning their right to be present, all regardless of what their music actually sounds like.
Ariana Grande, for instance, took the stage not to perform any of her exuberant hits from 2014 like “Problem” or “Break Free,” but rather a little-known ballad from her sophomore album, My Everything, in a performance that begged openly for grandness without actually featuring any. Unlike last week’s Super Bowl show where she played shrewdly to her strengths, Katy Perry was compelled to render “By The Grace of God,” a stripped-back production that does no favors for her lack of virtuosity. And Beyonce chose to skip the bombastic tracks from her self-titled opus in favor of a gospel hymn written in 1956, three years before the Grammys were first presented. Even Pharrell turned “Happy,” a song about happiness, into self-serious dribble.
This endless stream of ballads made not only for a mercilessly dull 220 minutes. It also felt nearly entirely unrepresentative of the pop music of the past year, marked by the clever trap-pop bounce of Perry’s “Dark Horse” and Beyonce’s “Drunk in Love,” the expertly crafted sugar-rushes of Megan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” Charli XCX’s “Boom Clap” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and a resurgence of radio friendly R&B from DJ Mustard and tracks like Chris Brown’s “Loyal” and Jason DeRulo’s “Talk Dirty.”
And you can forget how inextricable hip-hop has once again become from popular music over the past 12 months. There was nary a rapper in sight, save Kanye who mostly sang during his performances, and mom-friendly rhymer Common doing a track from the movie Selma with John Legend. I never thought I’d walk away from the telecast feeling like Iggy Azalea was underrepresented.
That same curious out-of-touch feeling was present on the awards side, although actual awards felt few and far between these mawkish, preening performances. As expected, newly-minted superstar Sam Smith was lavished with four prizes, three of which, Record and Song of the Year and Best New Artist, were in major categories. If “weighty crooning” is representative of how the Grammys believe pop music sounded, or should’ve sounded, in 2014, his coronation makes complete sense. No one relishes a mushy ballad quite like Smith.
Perhaps the most egregious—and despairingly encapsulating—event that occurred during last night’s ceremony was Beck’s win for Album of the Year for his Morning Phase, a solid-if-languid late-period work from the alt-legend. I love Beck—Odelay and Guero are personal treasures of mine. But in what world is Morning Phase the defining album of 2014? Certainly not the one I’m living in.
With its revolutionary and successful surprise release tactic, its richly realized, career-affirming sounds and near-universal appeal, Beyonce deserved the win—her output, despite its relatively subversive nature, was the touchstone of pop in 2014. Although Smith is not my cup of tea, there’s no question that his music was synonymous with the past year. Even Ed Sheeran, who released a more minor work, x, had far more to do with contemporary pop music than Beck. And It’s not like Morning Phase was an alternative blockbuster, either. It’s sold under 300,000 copies as of this morning.
So what gives here? Who exactly is pleased by Beck’s win (we know Kanye wasn’t)? Who digs these ceaseless weepy performances? Who wants to watch Jessie J perform with Tom Jones? Who out there feels like justice was served and 2014’s music was properly honored last night? Forget being entertained, but was anyone even slightly amused by the damn thing?
Or maybe the problem is expecting anything of merit from the Grammys at all. This was, after all, the awards body that granted the 2007 Album of the Year trophy to a Herbie Hancock covers album over landmarks like Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and West’s Graduation.
The truth is that, at least in my adult life, the Grammys have stubbornly refused to be in step with the contemporary pop landscape, instead using their power to recast popular culture in the rather nebulous mode they see fit. When they’ve gotten it right recently, it’s been the result of a fluke where the defining album or artist of the year happened to fit snugly into the Academy’s prescriptive and outdated pop music box, as with Adele in 2013. The last time the awards felt even slightly prescient was in 2003, when Album of the Year was given to OutKast’s double album, Speakerboxx / The Love Below. Watching last night’s ceremony, it’s hard to imagine how that even happened—somehow, the show has managed to regress.
There were a few bright spots. Sia threw a curveball into the umpteenth face-obscuring performance of her magnificent “Chandelier” by having Kristin Wiig join usual compatriot, teen dance phenom Maddy Ziegler, on stage. Rihanna made a great case for her divisive new single “FourFive Seconds” featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney, while simultaneously showcasing her vastly-improved vocal chops. Annie Lennox reminded us of what a truly compelling voice sounds like when utilized correctly during her cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell on You,” accompanied by Hozier. And even Madonna, an artist’s who recent output and antics have been wince-inducing, got points during her performance of “Living For Love,” merely for injecting the show with a jolt of adrenaline that it desperately needed.
But disturbingly little of what went down on the Grammys stage last night felt like it appealed to anyone in particular. At some point, the 18–49 demographic that any televised event needs to service in order to stay afloat is going to say “fuck it” to the Grammys, if they haven’t already. And why shouldn’t they? In a world of endless, well-crafted, comprehensive lists of the year’s best music, as well as award shows like the VMAs and the BET Awards which at least know how to keep your attention, the Grammys are going to need to make like any other 57-year-old deep in the throes of a midlife crisis: look in the mirror and ask themselves, ‘who are we?’ At this juncture, what the Grammys are—and who they’re meant for—isn’t even remotely clear.
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