Is the irrelevance of the Grammys a good thing?
 

So, the Grammys are pretty much a joke. Often out of touch (Milli Vanilli anyone?) and laughably egalitarian ("And the Grammy for best solo album by a polka band with 3 members whose name starts with "L" goes to..."), they make the Golden Globes seem important.

But I'm starting to think that that's a good thing. Mostly due to one quote I heard on an NPR story. It was something along the lines of, "What you don't see is people tailoring their music to win a Grammy. They just don't care enough. Whereas you see movie studios gearing their output to get Oscars because winning an Oscar translates into millions of extra dollars."

Wait, that's supposed to be a problem? That musicians, in general, write and perform music for the sake of making good music, not for the sake of conforming to some award-giving body's standards? That's sounds like a good kind of problem to me. If having a legitimate awards show means music in general becomes more manufactured-for-the-sake-of-awards, I think I'm happy with the Grammys as they are.

Especially when it is able to provide comedy gold like this:

Homer: Oh, why won't anyone give me an award?
Lisa: You won a Grammy.
Homer: I mean an award that's worth winning.
["award show"-style music plays while a disclaimer scrolls
by on the screen, reading, "LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Mr.
Simpson's opinions does not reflect those of the
producers, who don't consider the Grammy an award at
all."]

On the other hand ... and I didn't watch this year's show ... their awards ceremony is usally 8,000 times more entertaining than any other, simply by virtue of featuing so many musical performances. I appreciate that, even if I don't like the performances. And often times, I've been pleasantly surprised.


They have the good sense, btw, to give away hundreds of Best Polka Band type awards in the hours before the broadcast, leaving room on the show for only a tiny percentage of top prizes and lots of musical acts.

Well, I obviously can't speak to the music part of it but I do have an opinion on the movie part.

I think there's room for both. There are plenty of people out there trying to make whatever movie speaks to them and if awards follow then great. But on the other hand, I'm glad that there is this awards infrastructure that drives studios to put some large budgets into less commercial films. While the academy award winning films are rarely what I would consider the absolute best of the year (though for me this may be a year of confluence if No Country wins big) they are rarely actually bad movies (though that happens too, cf Chicago and Tom Jones).

I think one difference between the movie awards and the music awards (as perceived by someone so far outside the music scene that Sri Lankan rice pricing policy is probably more relevant to my daily life) is that it seems that in the music awards pure commercial fluff is much more likely to be given the big awards. Whereas in the movie industry, no matter how commercially successful it is Ironman has no chance at winning Best Picture next year.

The entertainment value of the show is apparently a recent phenomenon. They played some audio clips from older shows. Cringe worthy indeed.

Ah, yeah. I don't listen to all types of music and can not get the hype surrounding some of it. This does, to me, devalue the importance of winning a Grammy. That some of it, which to me is pure BS, win awards. And, the people who have had spaz attacks when they haven't won?

I didn't watch the whole show {I do enjoy most of the entertainment they put on, a little variety show, to speak} but I saw that when they were giving an award to the song writers, the song 'Umbrella' had a list of writers. WTF? Was the song that difficult to write? I am not commenting on the song, but, out of all of the songs, it had the most writers.

1989:

-Jethro Tull over Metallica for Best Hard rock/Metal performance.

-DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince over Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back".



Yeah, the Grammys have been irrelevant - dead to me even - for almost 20 years. Best twenty years of my life.

I don't remember a time when the Grammys WERE relevant. They've never been so for me.

They weren't ever a reason to buy or not buy music but I always enjoyed watching the people get together and have some perform. This was mostly because I never went out to concerts so this was nice to see live performances. And, there was no MTV, etc. So, this was it.

Dang, now MTV sucks and FUSE which I enjoyed a few years back, has turned into pretty much the same. *blech*

1985 - Lionel Richie's "Can't Slow Down" beats Cyndi Lauper's "She's So Unusual," Tina Turner's "Private Dancer," Springsteen's "Born In The USA" and Prince's "Purple Rain" for Album of the Year.

Whoa! I forgot about that mousepod. Maybe Richie's wife kicked a little Grammy voter ass?


And mojo for the Family Guy line.