As the Grammys come closer, the categories’ nominations have been released and aren’t the best. It continues the record of the Grammys being the worst award show, and if your name is Taylor Swift, you will be nominated.
It first started in 1959, with the first event happening in the Beverly Hilton Hotel on May 4, and has been operated by The Recording Academy. The academy is a committee of music artists, producers, engineers, and anyone in the field of sound as art. They decide the nomination for all of the categories. The Grammys are supposed to be a celebration of music that was great last year. Instead, they choose either commercially successful or popular albums instead of the best music of that year.
For example, in 2016, Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” which many people say to be one of the greatest albums of all time, lost to Taylor Swift’s “1989,” which, fun fact, was when she became a sellout. Another fun fact, Kendrick has been nominated for best album for every single one of his studio albums (except his debut) for best album and has lost every time.
Another example: Back in 2012, when Kanye was still good, he released “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” which won Album of the Decade not once, not twice, but five times from publications like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. But when the Grammy nominations came out, he was snubbed instead for Adele and Lady Gaga, and Gaga had been picked her third time in a row at that point!
The last example was in 2018, with every album on the list having great works that deserved to win the award. Jay-Z’s “4:44,” Childish Gambino with “Awaken, My Love!” and Kendrick’s fan favorite, “DAMN.” and even Lorde’s “Melodrama” was her best album! Every one of them made sense and was deserved, except for one, Bruno Mars’ “24k Magic,” his most commercially successful album that was all hits. Guess who won. To add salt to the wounds, He had already won once before and been nominated, too. This was the only time Jay-Z, Lorde, and Childish Gambino were ever nominated.
But not all of the Grammys were that bad. 2014 was the last good award show with great picks like Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories,” Kendrick’s first nomination with “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” and Taylor Swift’s “Red,” which I enjoyed. While I would have wanted Kendrick to win, The Robots deserved it the most as this was their only Album of the Year nomination.
The nominations for this year are almost the same as normal. I found Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department” to be extremely boring, and I didn’t even know André 3000 had released anything new, and why the heck is Jacob Collier’s “Djesse Vol.4” getting nominated? Vol.3 was nominated last year and they both were bad. Half of Vol.4 were covers of other songs!
I am fine with the rest of the nominations. “Short ‘n Sweet” and “Cowboy Carter” were OK. I enjoyed the new Billie Eilish album, but I think the best albums on the list are Chappell Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” and Charili xcx’s “brat” and make more sense than Djesse.
Even though I liked at least half of the albums on that list, I would have chosen something different than Taylor Swift getting her seventh album of the year nomination. I would replace Swift with “Imaginal Disc” by Magdalena Bay, a married couple who make music together. To diversify the list, I am replacing André 3000 with JPEGMaifa’s “I Lay Down My Life For You,” and Jacob Collier with Vampire Weekend’s “Only God Was Above Us.” I might be a bit biased with these picks, but to be honest, anything is better than Djesse.
While I don’t like the Grammys and prefer the Oscars or Game Awards, I can enjoy them and sometimes, these award shows can be fun. It is great when they nominate an album that deserves to win and see it when—if they do something like that and be consistent— then maybe I can forgive them. Even when they nominate Djesse.
