It approaches again: the music industry’s annual memoriam of itself, in which thousands of music-industry luminaries (and just as many who’d like to think they are) lavish mucho pomp and drawn-out circumstance upon a set of artists basically nobody else agrees are the best of the year.
2016’s Grammy nominations stand more of a chance than usual of breaking this trend. (Representative headlines: "Surprise! The Grammy Nominations Don’t Totally Suck This Year"; "This Is Not the Year to Complain About the Grammys.") Critics’ favorites like Kendrick Lamar and Courtney Barnett share space with crowd pleasers like Taylor Swift and the Weeknd, with nary a Macklemore in sight. (Worth noting: The Grammy cutoff is September 30, which places, among others, one Adele Adkins on the other si-ide.) What could possibly go wrong? Well…
Standby for a manufactured war between Taylor and Kendrick
Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift lead the nominations with 11 and 7 nods respectively, the former the most Grammy nods a rapper has gotten in one night; they compete in Album and Song of the Year. Equally pertinent: wherever Swift goes, awards show drama follows. Surely the producers will be looking play up a nonexistent rivalry. The potentiality for drummed up beef is exactly as silly as it sounds; Swift and Lamar have collaborated before and the Grammys are among the stodgier of ceremonies (though it seems they’d love to shed that stigma).
Alas, the world demands bad blood for the bad blood god (and the ratings god, a much stronger deity), and barring unlikely drama from Ed Sheeran or the Weeknd, this is the stone from which the Grammys will wrench it. The battle lines are just too clear: pop squad leader vs. rap visionary, timeless retro-pop vs. timely social commentary, celebrity and model pal vs. serious thinker, Grammy darling vs. Grammy snub (good kid, m.A.A.d city won zero out of its seven Grammy nominations, but it did win him a Macklemore wall-of-text!)
But speaking of snubs:
Snubs are a lie
Closely related to the tradition of complaining about the Grammys is the tradition of complaining about Grammy snubs. At the moment you read this, a million Directioners are furiously Tweeting vitriol about Justin Bieber’s moment as tween of the hour; meanwhile, the more critic-infested parts of the Internet mourned the omission of such cult favorites as Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION, Lana Del Rey’s Honeymoon, and (inexplicably to some) Nick Jonas’s "Jealous".
In Internet Land, Carly Rae Jepsen is pop’s gurgling, blushing heart. In Grammy Land, Carly Rae Jepsen released "Call Me Maybe" and a succession of singles that floundered at radio. Honeymoon was a midtempo album-album that produced no "Summertime Sadness" redux. Jonas is, well, a Jonas. (There can be only one tween of the hour.) The ideal Grammy pop darling looks more like Tori Kelly, whose sunny Natasha Bedingfieldisms earned her a Best New Artist nod over approximately 50 other rising-pop possibilities.
Chief among artists that might actually have been snubbed: the Foo Fighters, who’ve for years turned categories into, in effect, Best Dave Grohl; and former Grammy darlings Mumford & Sons, whose No. 1 album Wilder Mind received a scintillating zero noms. But even this isn’t a snub, on the minor technicality that the album was so undeniably not good even the Grammys couldn’t fake it.
The Grammys continue to Not Get Dance Music
A quick recap of the heyday of EDM, as told by the Grammys:
2012: A David Guetta/Chris Brown/Lil Wayne "tribute" to the genre that came off like a hostage situation.
2013: The humiliating nomination of Liechtensteinian grifter Al Walser and his execrable "I Can’t Live Without You", whose legacy consists of one Bandcamp power-pop cover, one beef with Zedd, and the continued inclusion in lists like this.
2014: A year in which the Grammys still called EDM "electronica." (Perhaps fittingly, actual electronica, the kind that peaked in the late '90s variety, get disproportionate love from the Grammys; this is an awards ceremony that nominated BT(!) in 2011(!!!)
2016’s slate, then, is as good as one can expect: an even split between critical favorites (Jamie xx, Caribou), populists (Disclosure, Jack Ü) and Chemical Brothers (Chemical Brothers) that may well go to unlikely safe choice Skrillex.
The Grammys are trying very, very hard to avoid Macklemore 2.0
Before pondering the Grammys’ takes on rap and R&B, let’s take a quick pan over the other genre categories: Rock remains an absolute mess. (Barnett, for one, isn’t in it, or its alternative counterpart. But hey, she won Australia’s ARIA Award!… for cover art.) Country sticks to its portfolio songwriters (Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark, Ashley Monroe) and an underdog of choice (Chris Stapleton, fresh off sweeping the CMAs) over fresher faces like teenage rebels Maddie & Tae or puppyish country bro Sam Hunt. The question of what to do with pop is neatly answered by the omnipresent Swift and the Weeknd riding two Grammy-bait singles: MJ tribute "Can’t Feel My Face" and orchestra-slinky "Earned It". The likes of Meghan Trainor and Jason Derulo go straight to Best New Artist and the song categories.
Meanwhile, in the rap and R&B categories, there’s no way but up to go from Kendrick Real. The rap categories are about as safe as possible, mixing award-bait (Common and John Legend’s "Glory") with rap-radio hits and even the occasional surprising hint of a pulse (the presence of "Trap Queen"). The incoherent gerrymandering of the R&B categories into R&B, Traditional R&B and "Urban Contemporary" remains exactly as stupid and respectability-politicking as it was from the beginning, but it at least broadens the field; by far the most surprising of the nominations was relative newcomer Kehlani, whose You Should Be Here was among the year’s quiet standouts and whose inclusion suggests that a critical mass of people might—behold!—actually be paying attention.
There are heartening success stories to be (hopefully) had
Kehlani is one of many inspired nominees that might even win; her biggest competition are two other people’s champs, the Internet’s Ego Death and Miguel’s Wildheart; Tame Impala’s Currents and Björk’s Vulnicura received nods really the only place they could (Best Alternative Album); Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking musical Hamilton—ineligible for this year’s Tonys due to release date but riding a revolution’s worth of momentum (with Fun Home a distant second, and The King & I’s revival right out). But here’s another underdog, perhaps a little outre: "Thinking Out Loud".
Ed Sheeran is, of course, the opposite of an underdog; the record coated the radio in saccharine goo for months on end, nigh-ensuring its spot in both the Record and Song of the Year lists. But the latter goes to songwriters. One of the more useful functions of the Grammys is its staunch focus on honoring songwriters, continually overlooked and often financially beleaguered even as producers become celebrities. (Everybody has heard of Max Martin.) And despite Sheeran’s lone-troubadour-dude image, "Thinking Out Loud" is equally the work of someone actually unfamiliar to all but Sheeran diehards: Amy Wadge. The Welsh artist and solo singer-songwriter has worked with Sheeran for years—one of his early EPs was called Songs I Wrote With Amy—but her "Thinking Out Loud" only made the cut after she took her financial troubles to Sheeran, who cut the track almost on the spot, earning her a large pile of royalties. It’d smack of publicity stunt if Sheeran didn’t follow through with this, such as by paying off her mortgage; it almost makes the record’s reign of sap worth it.
And, tragically, there are people in the world who like "See You Again"
Somehow.