Strawberry Champagne All Night - Or Why The Grammys Don't Matter Anymore

Following the Grammys professionally for about 30 years, I didn't even tune in anymore, rather watching "Dirty Money" on Netflix. They actually should make an episode about the music business. I volunteer to be a consultant. Music has become like food, GMO mass-produced lowest common denominator cRap preferred over a home-cooked meal. What once used to be an award with respect, even so often delayed in the game, when artists who were ready to "retire", got bestowed with a gazillion of awards, decades into their careers. 

Don't get me wrong, I love the late Leonard Cohen, but "You Want It Darker" of the album with the same title is great but it's not a rock song, Snubbing R.L. Boyce or Guy Davis and Fabrizio Poggi for traditional blues and giving that award to British import The Rolling Stones, really. Nothing against the club of septuagenarians, they always made a living siphoning of the blues, but they are a rock band and not a traditional blues band. To have a Michael Jackson wannabe in Bruno Mars winning best R&B album and ignoring PJ Morton just adds to my point. Even in country music, I do like Chris Stapleton and I do love the fresh approach he is infusing into what by now is nothing but a bubble-gum genre. I even had his two albums in my 10 of 2017. And I like the fact that the jokesters Nashville is producing, got snubbed by him. But he's a great Americana artist, with some country influences at best.

Copycats
Artists in every genre were always influenced by artists before them, there is always a chip of the old block, who gets you inspired, started. But Bruno Mars, who also tries to impress as wannabe Elvis and Prince may best deserve a pop recognition, but not Record, Album and Song of the year. Due to a lawsuit, he had to add the Gap Band as co-creators to his big hit with Mark Ronson "Uptown Funk" and there are still two other lawsuits pending. Female Rap-Trio The Sequence claim their "Funk You Up" as well as Zapp & Roger saying their "More Bounce To The Ounce" were both used in that Grammy-winning composition. Talking about copying and pasting, RME Ed Sheeran who won Best Pop Song for "Shape Of You" had to add the writers of TLC‘s 1999 hit “No Scrubs” to the song, after he got sued.

But I guess it's all well suited, considering the red carpet and how artists were dressed, getting more press today than actual memorable performances at the award show. Case in point, why take Eric Clapton's beautiful ballad "Tears In Heaven" to honor the victims of the recent shooting in Las Vegas. The sparse production was all right, but why not choose a country song like Vince Gill's "Go Rest High On That Mountain," or even Steve Wariner's "Hole In The Floor Of Heaven" or as outlandish as it sounds actually write a tribute song to these victims. Maybe ask Alan Jackson for some help, his showstopper "Where Were You, When The World Stop Turning" about the fall of the Twin Towers in New York, premiered just two months later at the CMA Awards. Talking about the CMA Awards, Little Big Town sang "Better Man" there in 2016, so they won with it almost two years later at the Grammys and I'm sure that Taylor Swift's penning the song had nothing to do with the band winning.
It is nice to see Chris Stapleton and Emmylou Harris pairing up for a tribute to the late Tom Petty, but why not asking Chris Hillman, Herb Pederson, and John Jorgenson, who recorded "Wildflowers" with Petty as the producer for Hillman's "BIDIN' MY TIME?"



And then there is, what the genius' call "American Roots Music," now as the words imply this has a foundation, but it is shunned by the telecast. May it be string music from Appalachia, singer/songwriters, too a certain degree country, blues, folk, bluegrass and the hodgepodge called Americana, it's mostly music that matters, lyrical-, regional- or music-wise. But it has become the collection basin of what used to be in the Rock, the Country, and the Blues or even the Pop-Charts. If Bonnie Raitt would have released "Nick of Time" in 2017 instead of 1989, she wouldn't have won album of the year but would have been nominated as Best American Roots Performance.
Another point - the Rolling Stones won their, can you quick guess it, their THIRD Grammy. Talking about relevance and how screwed up this whole gramophone business is.

So from the pond of love here are some "rootsy" winners - Alabama Shakes took away the Performance category with "Killer Diller Blues," "If We Were Vampires" by Jason Isbell the song honors and best album for "THE NASHVILLE SOUND." The Infamous Stringdusters couldn't count on the "LAWS OF GRAVITY" and had to share the best Bluegrass album with Rhonda Vincent And The Rage's live album "IN CONCERT VOLUME ONE."

So below are a couple of videos you may have missed and which may have deserved that golden gramophone more than the actual winners. As people are tuning out, like me - the early ratings-game speaks volumes, overall viewership sunk by several millions, numbers indicating the show fell 26% in the key demo, meaning adults 18-49 years old. So be it, let it go.









Sources: grammy.com, wire services, youtube,