Why I Won't Be Watching the Grammys Next Year
Last night I sat down and watched the Grammys for the last time. Its three hours contained performances I liked (Beyoncé’s comes to mind), and ones I would never watch if it wasn’t the Grammys. There were moments of shock, moments of outrage, but mostly, I was just bored. I don’t dislike the Grammys because it considers 1989 by Taylor Swift to be a better album than To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar, I dislike the Grammys because it directly compares those two albums in the frame of a boring, three-hour show.
Photo: Kevin Winter/WireImage.com
The premise of the Grammys might as well be, “What’s a better album, Kid A by Radiohead or the Chronic by Dr. Dre?” It’s a pointless question. Music, like all art forms, is a matter of subjective taste. I have an opinion on music, but that’s all this blog is -- sharing an opinion, rather than dictating yours. I like some albums more than others. I make no claim to being the objective arbiter of taste. What annoys me about the Grammys is it is a primetime show claiming to be the end-all, be-all music award. It’s true, music sites, bloggers, and newspapers all do the same, but at least they have a point of view. I expect some sort of rock album to top Rolling Stone’s list, and either an indie or a Kanye album to top Pitchfork’s. It’s a bit ridiculous, but I can use their lists as suggestions based on those specified tastes. The Grammys, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. Does it give awards to an artist because of the influence they have on music? The popularity of their music? The “quality” of their music, however that may be specified? It’s a weird, inconsistent world where Morning Phase by Beck, an album that garnered good reviews from most critics but nothing overtly special, won out over Beyoncé’s immensely popular self-titled album in 2014, but 1989 by Taylor Swift, another very popular album, won out over To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar in 2015, which many fans and critics consider one of the best rap albums of all time.
The other major problem with the Grammys is the show itself. It’s a full night’s commitment to things you mostly have no interest watching. For every minute of tension before an award is announced, there is a minute and a half thank-you speech followed by two minutes of commercials. Each live performance is sandwiched between fine but forgettable stand-up and other filler. The monotony is punctuated by some great performances, but it suffers again from a lack of a perspective, devolving into a potpourri of artists I love and hate, but have very little thematic connection to each other. This lack of consistency is both inevitable and the crux of the Grammys’ problem. In its effort to cater to everyone, it caters to no one, and in the end, the Grammys ends up feeling less like a music festival than a very long mediocre late-night show.