What confuses me about the Grammy’s is how little the nominations for the big awards match up to what the critics think. It feels like they choose their nominees from the charts, and maybe attempt to add an interesting pick here and there. I don’t watch movies too much, but the Oscars seem to me to do a better job at reflecting critical opinion. Or at least their nominees aren’t just the blockbusters of the year. Of the nominees this year, Lemonade was by far the most critically acclaimed, but 25 won. Last year, T.P.A.B. was by far the most critically acclaimed, but 1989 won.
I wanted to point out a key thing that happened at the Grammys this year. My D is totally into Chance the Rapper. He purposely does not have a recording contract or any means of sales distribution. He puts his music out as free mix lists (I have no idea where they are or how you get them). She goes on and on about how ‘independent’ artists are not recognized.
He won in several categories, including Rap Album of the Year when he didn’t even sell one album. I believe he makes his money from concerts and merchandise. He has tried to get onto talk shows to sing some of his songs and the only one who has invited him is Ellen. This is because he is anti recording industry.
Somehow he won grammys and he has no ‘machine’. He was almost crying. An amazing change in the voting
zooser, I imagine Santana will have a visit from the Beyhive! lol
I am not a huge fan of Adele either. She has a beautiful voice but a lot of her songs all sound the same to me. Her speech for Album of the Year was in my view ungracious and whiny. She appeared very off her game the whole evening. Her statement about her father was flat out uncalled for and inappropriate for the occasion.
The most moving part of the whole show for me was when the trumpeter performed a small piece of “America the Beautiful.”
I was just about to argue the opposite. I looked at this year’s Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll – that’s pretty much the gold standard for crowdsourced critical cred – and what interested me was how much overlap there was.
The top five Pazz & Jop albums this year, in descending order, were David Bowie, Blackstar; Beyonce, Lemonade; A Tribe Called Quest, We Got It From Here . . . ; Chance the Rapper, Coloring Book; and Solange, A Seat At The Table. All of those got a lot of love at the Grammys. Adele’s 25 was did not make the list this year, because it was part of Pazz & Jop last year, when it came in at a respectable (given how resolutely non-hip it is) #35.
Other high-placing Pazz & Jop artists who got significant Grammy attention and/or featured performances included Radiohead (#7), Leonard Cohen (#8), Kanye West (#10), Anderson.Paak (#11), Rhianna (#13), Sturgill Simpson (#16), and Maren Morris (#28). The Pazz & Jop voters tend not to like C&W as much as the American public in general, but their top country pick (Simpson) won Best Country Album and was the token left-field critical entry for Album of the Year, not to mention his biggest exposure ever, their second favorite (Miranda Lambert) had a couple nominations for her single, and their third favorite (Morris) had nominations and a featured performance.
It’s correct that Chance the Rapper does not have any recording contract, and also that such status is completely purposeful, since any record company would sign him in an instant. It’s correct that he puts out music as free mixtapes. However, the album for which he was nominated and won was an Apple i-Tunes exclusive that was not free, and he presumably was paid actual money for his contributions to Kanye West’s Life of Pablo and other lucrative projects. He was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live last spring. He has lots of sophisticated marketing behind him.
Ooops. I was wrong about Chance the Rapper. His record was available first from Apple’s streaming service, and then from all the streaming services. He gets paid by them when people listen to his music. I bought a bootleg, because I don’t do streaming yet.
@JHS, None of the albums in the top 5 of that list were nominated for album of the year besides Lemonade, and besides that only Chance the Rapper was nominated in the major four categories. Maybe it’s impressive that the albums or artists were nominated at all, which I think is part of my point that the Grammy’s don’t really line up with what critics think. And from the singles list, I don’t think Mitski or Rae Stremmurd were nominated at anything.
^^Right but he doesn’t charge for his music - you can listen to it on Spotify as well.
My S has been a Chance fan for a few years. Actually saw him here in town at a cheezy local club a few years ago - he was the opening act and the place probably held a couple hundred people.
Then he saw him at a free concert in Detroit - a promo concert by Budwiser or something. FREE. That was 2 summers ago.
Today Chance announced a tour - tickets went on sale tonight. That’s what he does. Doesn’t announce it too early because he doesn’t want the media hype and people buying tickets just to resell. My D1 and D2 bought tickets to see him in May - he sold out a nearly 20,000 seat venue in a matter of minutes. Ticket prices were still reasonable for a Grammy winner!
He also doesn’t use ticketmaster. I despise ticketmaster. Chance is playing in just about every music festival this spring/summer up and down the east coast.
^^^^^He sounds like a great guy. I just wish I liked rap, but I do not.
How could you not like Cocoa Butter Kisses? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TErySTMbFlk
Chance is definitely a rapper non-fans of rap can love.
It often crosses the line into proselytism for me. There’s way more Jesus than I like.
@warbrain : For crying out loud! When someone like Mitsky gets a Grammy, we can all go ice skating in Hell. Her record is fantastic, but it’s not a broad-base consumer product. Fifteen years from now, when she has sanded off the edges and turned into a version of what Sleater-Kinney is now, maybe she’ll get nominated for something. (For those wondering what the heck I am talking about: Mitski is a very young Japanese-American woman who does very loud, often angry lo-fi punky songs, often explicitly sexual, or about race, or both,)