Grammys = meh

As usual, I skipped last night's live broadcast of the Grammys and instead opted for a variety of highlights and recaps. There were a few things that I probably would have liked to have seen live, like M.I.A. performing (while 9 months pregnant) a song about violently mugging western tourists to a crowd of mostly middle-aged liberal intellectuals, or like Radiohead replacing their whole rhythm section with the USC marching band, which, judging from the smirk on Thom Yorke's face served no purpose other than to prove in spectacular fashion how much better they are than all of the artists that have beaten them over the years in the major categories (and no, "Best Alternative Album" does not qualify as a major category any more than "Best Regional Mexican Album" does).





Much like last year's surprise victory from Herbie Hancock, this year's major awards sweep came from left field for anybody who isn't either a huge fan of American roots music played by British people or a Barnes & Noble member who still wears earrings despite being over 40 and a dude (Harrison Ford, I'm looking in your direction). In the interest of objectivity I listened to a few songs from Robert Plant/Allison Krauss album that took home "Album of the Year", including the song that won "Record of the Year", and found them to all be extremely tasteful (in a boring, underwhelming sort of way) but mostly just very unremarkable. At the very least the album was released on a proper independent label (which is about as far outside the box as the Recording Academy is willing to go). I thought Adele winning best new artist the year after Amy Winehouse to be a bit redundant, but could hardly come up with a compelling argument for any of the other nominees in the category. The only awards that seemed even halfway legit were the ones in the fringe categories. Despite my utter indifference to his work, Lil Wayne probably deserved to sweep the hip-hop categories for having the remarkable ability to actually move records (though I assume the voting in these categories is based entirely on the voting members going to their kids' ipods and voting for whatever shows up in their 'recently played' list). And Radiohead's win in the "Alternative Album" category was appreciated in spite of the fact that the album was actually released two years ago (for those of us with a computers and an internet connection anyway).

Of course, my gut reaction is outrage and disgust over the lack of prescience reflected by these awards, but I'm going to declare that the Grammys have now reached a new level of irrelevence somewhere between the daytime Emmys and the Spike TV Video Game Awards. They give out awards that reflect neither the tastes of critics nor the music-buying public. They are now so pointless that they barely register as a side-note to news of Chris Brown's arrest, and by no means the other way around.