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Grammy recap

Posted at 10:23 AM on February 1, 2010 by Mac Wilson
Filed under: The Current Presents

The Grammys are irrelevant, out of touch, a showcase for terrible music, etc. These are all sentiments I encountered while reading about last night's 52nd Grammy Awards, the music industry's biggest night of the year. Last week, as an installment of the Current Presents, we took what turned out to be a surprisingly straight-faced look at some of the categories & nominees this year, choosing our personal favorites while also casting our predictions. Better late than never, I thought I'd briefly recap the Grammy show (which is still archived at The Current Presents page) and examine how close we came to picking the winners.

Best New Artist:
Jade & I whiffed on this one. We each predicted that Keri Hilson would be the next to follow in the tradition of female chanteuses winning this award, but the winners wound up being the Zac Brown Band, a merry band of jingoistic hippie hillbillies from Atlanta, Georgia.

Best Americana Album:
Bill & I each predicted that Bob Dylan would win the inaugural edition of this award, but we wound up being pleasantly surprised by the victory of Levon Helm for his record Electric Dirt. It's remarkable that Helm was able to record this album at all, after his bouts with throat cancer. This marks Helm's second Grammy in three years, after winning an award for Dirt Farmer two years ago. During the show, we alluded to the Best Contemporary Folk Album, which was won this year by Steve Earle's Townes. I think Bill would rather have seen a different Townes nominated. Wilco & Neko Case each came up empty-handed in their respective categories.

Best Alternative Music Album:
It seems obvious in retrospect that Phoenix would win for Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but Mark Wheat & I were up in the air over who would wind up winning the award. Wheat wound up being correct, saying that Phoenix' airplay & iTunes sales would lift them to victory, while Karen O's contributions to Where the Wild Things Are wouldn't quite be enough for victory. Each of us would have voted for David Byrne & Brian Eno, but we can at least take a small consolation in that the album won a Grammy for best artwork.

Best Rap Album:
Melanie & I predicted the Grammy voters' every move in this category, correctly predicting that Eminem would win for the dreadful Relapse. Melanie & I had a nice conversation about what it would take for some of the prominent Minneapolis hip-hop, such as Atmosphere, Brother Ali, or P.O.S., to gain recognition in this category. Artistically, their work is top-notch, but as we've seen, the Grammys could often care less about artistry and more often reward sales figures. P.O.S. doesn't have the sales of Flo Rida, which is both unfortunate & depressing. Brother Ali himself noted on his Twitter feed this morning that "Atmosphere deserves a Grammy." There you have it.

Record of the Year:
Jim McGuinn & I thought this would come down to Lady Gaga & Taylor Swift, with the Black Eyed Peas a possible dark horse. We also mentioned Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" as being the only rock nominee in the field -- a development Jim chalked up to the rise of music-related video games such as Rock Band. Lo and behold, Kings of Leon won the award, the latest in a trend of rock acts winning Record of the Year, even when surrounded by R&B or rap-related tracks (i.e. Coldplay beating OutKast, Beyonce, & Eminem in 2004; Green Day beating Kanye West in 2006).

Album of the Year:
Neither Jim nor I felt that any of these were truly the album of the year. We held our noses & cast our respective ballots for Lady Gaga & Taylor Swift (again). I wound up being on the right side of history, as Swift's Fearless won Album of the Year. I'd rather have been in Jim's shoes, though, as he struck up quite the nice conversation with Prince at the Current's fifth birthday party on Friday night. I can only hope Jim asked Prince what it was like to lose Album of the Year (for Purple Rain!) to Lionel Richie.

This brings the 2010 Grammy season to a merciful close. See you next year(?)

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