Matryeshka
02-14-2011, 03:34 AM
There is a laundry list of performers/nominees who can blow off the stage the performers who have been shown tonight, and who should have been shown. NARAS claims to want to educate the populace about music, and then ends up pandering to the lowest common denominator when it comes to the live performances they show.
The Grammys (and to a lesser extent The Academy Awards and other award shows) walk a fine line between what's considered good and high-brow and what's considered popular. I remember in the 90s, the Grammys came under serious fire/criticism for nominating grunge and grunge-like acts who appealed to a very small percentage of people outside of critics. They got the same criticism some time in the 2000s--I remember a thread about the Grammys snarking about the amount of indies that no one had ever heard of being nominated. Now, they're nominating artists that have high sales-volumes, and they get critizied for being too commercial. It's a hard line to walk, and someone's going to be disappointed.
When nominating something, do you take into account record sales? Even if you don't like Ladies Gaga and Antebellum, they obviously speak to someone--lots of someone. OTOH, there's a good possibility that most of the artists nominated tonight will not be around next year, much less in twenty years. Who do you reward? There are very good arguments for both.
Music speaks very much in the present tense; it's the rare song/singer that stands the test of time. It's why classic rock stations play the same songs over and over and have seemingly less variety than stations that play current music. It's also not always obvious which songs will make it. In the 1950s and 60s, criticisms of appealing to just a sense of now and lowest-common denominator were leveled against Elvis Presley and The Beatles, and now, people who like those two acts are considered to have great taste in music.
I think most award shows do the best they can with what they get while balancing what's considered art by critics and enjoyable by the masses.
The Grammys (and to a lesser extent The Academy Awards and other award shows) walk a fine line between what's considered good and high-brow and what's considered popular. I remember in the 90s, the Grammys came under serious fire/criticism for nominating grunge and grunge-like acts who appealed to a very small percentage of people outside of critics. They got the same criticism some time in the 2000s--I remember a thread about the Grammys snarking about the amount of indies that no one had ever heard of being nominated. Now, they're nominating artists that have high sales-volumes, and they get critizied for being too commercial. It's a hard line to walk, and someone's going to be disappointed.
When nominating something, do you take into account record sales? Even if you don't like Ladies Gaga and Antebellum, they obviously speak to someone--lots of someone. OTOH, there's a good possibility that most of the artists nominated tonight will not be around next year, much less in twenty years. Who do you reward? There are very good arguments for both.
Music speaks very much in the present tense; it's the rare song/singer that stands the test of time. It's why classic rock stations play the same songs over and over and have seemingly less variety than stations that play current music. It's also not always obvious which songs will make it. In the 1950s and 60s, criticisms of appealing to just a sense of now and lowest-common denominator were leveled against Elvis Presley and The Beatles, and now, people who like those two acts are considered to have great taste in music.
I think most award shows do the best they can with what they get while balancing what's considered art by critics and enjoyable by the masses.