Op-Ed: 10 Tips for the Grammy Awards
The Clifton Chenier.
The solution is simple: One Lifetime Achievement Award every year, with a bulked-up salute during the show. There will be many less artists that earn the honorary trophy, but that makes it all the more prestigious. And hey, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame already exists to acknowledge influential artists from every age and genre. Let the Grammys have their lone icon of the night the same way that they only have one MusicCares Person of the Year for their philanthropic branch.
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9. Present Producer of the Year, Non-Classical During the Ceremony. First presented in 1975, the production award has quietly become one of the more interesting battles of the Grammy evening — and it’s never given out during the actual show. How cool would it have been to watch Dr. Dre accept his producer of the year trophy in 2001, after a dominant beginning of the millennium? Or Rick Rubin in 2007, following his illustrious work with the Dixie Chicks, Justin Timberlake and Red Hot Chili Peppers? Or Pharrell Williams last year, when his “Get Lucky”/”Blurred Lines” reign returned him to superstar status? This year, Max Martin could win his first producer of the year Grammy after a career spent re-molding pop music… and we won’t get to watch it. Bummer.
10. Make the Album of the Year & Record of the Year Categories More Iconic. This is unquestionably the biggest problem with the Grammys, and the hardest problem to fix. Whereas Oscar season is defined by months of jockeying for nomination consideration, public and private arguments about what will and should win best picture, and months of multiplex visits to make sure that you, the dutiful viewer, have watched as many nominated films as possible, the Grammy Awards just… sort of… come and go. The whole point of the Grammy Awards is to tune in for the performances, while the actual awards remain something of a byproduct of the star-studded evening, information that does not feel necessary to retain. Do you remember which album won album of the year two years ago? Do you know which Taylor Swift album won album of the year and which one was nominated but didn’t win? Can you name one song that won the record of the year award during the 2000s? For those of you that quickly rattled off Mumford & Sons‘ Babel, Taylor Swift’s Fearless and Red, and maybe a Norah Jones song or two, congratulations. Also, please understand that you are most definitely in the minority.
This year’s record of the year nominees are “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea feat. Charli XCX, “Chandelier” by Sia, “Stay With Me (Darkchild Version)” by Sam Smith, “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift and “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor. All five of those songs are pop smashes, and after this weekend, very few will actually care which of them was deemed the “record of the year.” That golden gramophone will not sway one’s personal preference within that collection of tracks, nor should it; but it’s also fun to overanalyze such trivial pop culture matters, like when Crash snatches best picture glory from Brokeback Mountain, or Shakespeare in Love stages a coup over Saving Private Ryan. There’s a level of investment in the major Oscar categories that does not exist, and may never exist, with the top trophies at the Grammys. For all the opulence of Grammy night, no one forms their historical biases on the awards doled out by this particular institution; if they did, they would look at the numbers and conclude that Kings of Leon is/was a better rock band than Nirvana.
Will the biggest album and song categories ever become cultural touchstones? It’s hard to say. The Grammys could take a major cue from the Oscars and put more stock in the nomination process, so that we obsess over which songs and albums could make the respective shortlists months in advance of their unveiling, and what nominations mean for the legacy of those projects. Or maybe the Grammys can downplay the song of the year award so that only one song category is the evening’s main event. This will be a tough process to complete, but it’s a fix that will make the Grammys all the more exciting, and let the show reach a new level of importance.
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