Has anyone read the list of nominees for the 45th Grammy Awards? For those who haven't had the pleasure, check it out.

I am without words. I can't believe these albums/songs were nominated as the best released all year. First of all, I wasn't aware that the time period they choose from is October 1st to September 30th. That seems a little odd to me.

Anyway, I think that even those of you who like the artists who were nominated can agree that these were hardly the best things released this year. I mean come on, "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne? WTF? "How You Remind Me" by Nickleback?

The Academy has obviously overshot in some attempt to cater to a wider pop music crowd, and have become the People's Choice awards. This is just sad.

Feel free to disagree (and I'm sure some of you will), but this just upsets me.

ps- I hope Springsteen sweeps it.

AFAIK, that's the way it's always been. Only a very few times in my lifetime has there been a non-popular artist given a Grammy. In other words, it's a crock and always has been.

Also note that the Grammy web site claims the date is (as I write this) January 18, 103. Good job. They've only had three years to notice and correct this. (Actually, it turns out that IE, of course, implements getYear incorrectly and returns 2003, whereas Mozilla does the right thing and returns 103. SO the incorrect thing has become a defacto standard. Still, you think they could add one line of code to check. <sigh>

I'm with Bitt here, in that there have rarely been any Grammy winners or even nominees who didn't have a good deal of commercial success, at least in the major award categories. I will add, though, that The Grammys have always had the tendency to pick acts and recordings which were both popular AND good. "Good" means different things to different people, but basically, because the nominating and selecting committes are made up of people from the music industry rather than fans, you'll tend to get a different version of what's "good."

The recording academy will tell you that they don't take album sales or chart positions into account, and I think history has shown there's a grain or two of truth in that statement... Most of the other award shows might as well just mail the awards to the most commercially successful acts from that year, whereas with the Grammys, it's more of a question of "among these commercially successful acts/records, which do other musicians and music industry heavyweights appreciate the most?" Slight variations on the same theme, I guess.

hardly the best things released this year

Call me a curmudgeonly old cynic if you must, but it wouldn't occur to me to look for decent music among the nominees of that sort of awards ceremony. There were a few decent albums in 2002 (Lemon Jelly's Lost Horizons, The Doves' Last Broadcast and Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights) and at least one brilliant album (The Streets' Original Pirate Material), plus a mix album so good that, were I the Grammys, I'd invent a new category just for it: Soulwax's 2 Many DJs. There were also at least two brilliant singles (Timo Maas's To Get Down and Liam Lynch's United States Of Whatever) but it doesn't surprise me at all that none of those are nominated for anything.

Peter

Edit: Three brilliant singles: Felix Da Housecat's Silver Screen Shower Scene.

I think the deal is that Dignan's still a kid and is just now coming to the realization that only suckers base their musical tastes on what other people (the Grammy committees, radio stations, Billboard, etc.) imply they should be.

Heh. This is the first time in several years that I've seen any mention of the Grammy awards. Just my luck for joining a community of people that like music.

No, I think that this year is just worse than normal. Now that I think about it, I never have liked or even noted past nominees or winners of the Grammys. I'd just listen for who won the main ones and I'd be like "Oh, that's nice" or "meh, they stink".

As far as the bigger players go, Beck's "Sea Change" should have been up for much more. It's nominated for "Best Alternative Album", whatever the hell that means anymore. Does anyone else agree with me on that one? I mean, I've been listening to this album around the clock, and it's just beautiful.

Anyway, be assured that I've never bought music based on the Grammys, Billboard, and especially not radio (for which I've always carried great disdain). My taste in music occasionally drifts to popular stuff (not pop), but is, by and large, pretty obscure and focused.

ps- I don't think the Academy would deny basing their nominees on record sales. It's pretty obvious.

Three brilliant singles: Felix Da Housecat's Silver Screen Shower Scene

I like the whole Kittenz & Thee Glitz album. Harlot is a great track too, and so is Madame Hollywood.

I don't think the Academy would deny basing their nominees on record sales. It's pretty obvious.

Actually, they would deny exactly that... From their web site..


"The GRAMMYs are the only peer-presented award to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position. "


Now, we all know that if you haven't sold any records, nobody, not even your peers in the music industry, will have heard of you, hence, you won't get nominated. But they claim that it's not part of their formula.

Like, think about it. Let's pretend that the nominees are picked based on 50 random individuals from the music industry (artists, producers, whatever) writing down their favorite albums of the year on little pieces of paper. Do you think an act that's only sold 10,000 records has a chance of being liked by more than, say, 3 or 4 of them?

Commercial success doesn't make an album good, but it does show that it strikes a chord with more listeners. Thus, I don't know how you can completely remove commercial success from ANY kind of award.

Having said all this, I never watch the grammys, and will continue to not watch them this year.

Okay, okay

I also never watch. I usually Tivo the Oscars and fast-forward through everything but the announcements.

Allright, I never watch award shows of any kind, but especially not music awards. After getting my Empeg, I simply don't listen to the radio anymore, and what I have heard I don't care for very much. In the end, if I watch award shows I get bent out of shape for no good reason, so it's not worth it. But I do have a question for you guys . . .

Why shouldn't awards be based on album sales, other than that would make the shows totally predictable? Art is a subjective form, and with regards to pop music, we aren't evaluating how the artist utilized Sonata form or was able to create a beautiful melody from a seemingly nonsensical grouping of notes. What I mean by this is that "Art Music" at least has some mathematical rules (almost scientific) with which you can judge the capabilities of the artist, but pop music really has no such science. In the end, who can say something is superior to something else? I will probably go to my grave thinking that Rush is the most brilliant band I've ever heard, and I'll bet most people out there disagree with me. So should I be upset that they don't win anything? I'm not, because the criteria isn't judged based on what I listen for in music. I'd say all these people giving awards can really do is figure out what most people value, and give that an award. It's sort of artificial, but what else are you going to do?

I also may regret this, but I didn't think "How You Remind Me" was a bad song. I only heard it a few times right before I got my Empeg, and I understand that they played it to death on the radio (again, I wouldn't know). It seemed to me to be a decent song, though. I haven't bought the album or anything, but what's so wrong with it that you guys detest it so much?

First off, it's kinda silly to base awards on album/single sales, as they've already gotten their reward for that. Secondly, they explicitly state that they're not based on sales in any way, which is obviously untrue. It's not as if they specifically recruit high-sales artists for the Grammy nominations, I'm sure, but those that have higher album sales have higher exposure, which means more people will vote for them during the nomination process (about the procedures of which I'm making assumptions), so you effectively get sales-based nominations. That is to say, if someone made an album that everyone who heard it thought it was the best album ever, but very few people heard it (probably because it wasn't promoted in any way), it wouldn't get a Grammy nod. And there are way too many albums that come out to expect even a person who goes out of his way to listen to a lot of music to have heard all of it, and I doubt that most of the nominators have really listened to all that much.

I like the fact that P.O.D. is up for best hard rock performance AND best metal performance. I always wondered how they decide the nominees in these categories. As for my nominations for album of the year:

Dream Theater - 6 Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Spock's Beard - Snow
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
Black Label Society - 1919 Eternal
Rush - Vapor Trails

Yeah, I realize that it's all mostly about promotion anyway. That's why I don't recall ever having watched the Grammys, because you can essentially guarantee something will do well if you put enough money behind it. I suppose that's why there's such a negative reaction to "popular" stuff among die-hard music lovers like empeggers. I've stayed largely ignorant of new stuff coming out, instead opting to search for the "classics" that seem to have withstood the test of time. The "desert island" thread we had a couple of months ago really helped me find some great stuff. The only CD I bought that came out this year was "Vapor Trails", and I have to admit I don't really care for it too much (I know, a sin for a Rush fan). Maybe in 5 years when the dust has settled I'll try to find out what people are still listening to and then I'll have a good idea of what's really worth my money.