The Grammy Awards took place last Sunday and they couldn’t have been more disappointing. To me, at least.
We didn’t even have enough time to recover from the slap at the Academy Awards that another slap hit us right in the face.
Somehow, the Grammys never manage to capture the best of the best when it comes to today’s music, but rather keep their nominations on a surface level of popularity and hype.
I also went back to my top albums and songs of 2022, and very few of my personal picks made it to the awards show.
Here’s a short commentary on the most disappointing night of the year for lovers of good music.
MONTERO didn’t win any awards?! Like, seriously?!?!
Lil Nas X ending the night without a single award in his hands for his mind-blowing debut MONTERO might be the single most disappointing thing that happened at this year’s Grammys.
While Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s power duo, Silk Sonic, is indeed a wonder of nature, their album, An Evening with Silk Sonic, really wasn’t anything special. It just appealed to lovers of 80s music and that’s it.
I cannot say the same about Jon Batiste’s winning album We Are simply because I didn’t even listen to it, but its non-popularity–compared to Lil Nas’s ground-breaking promotional strategy–kind of speaks of itself.
And can we talk about the fact that he wasn’t even nominated for any of the awards in the Rap category? Just unbelievable. Lil Nas was the most talked about artist in 2021, and yet he got no recognition at this year’s Grammys. None.
Really though, what’s up with the hype surrounding Olivia Rodrigo?
Next up, Olivia Rodrigo.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked her album Sour–I really did–but I was not as into it as some other girls my age who literally freaked out over it.
Olivia won for “Best New Artist”, “Best Pop Solo Performance” and “Best Pop Vocal Album”, competing against Billie Eilish, Doja Cat and Ariana Grande in the latter two categories.
Personally, none of these albums ended up in my Top 5 Best Albums of the year–though Doja’s Planet Her got an honorable mention–but there were plenty of other pop records that don’t necessarily fit under the “commercial pop” label but are still worthy of recognition.
I think Olivia is experiencing her 15 minutes of fame right now. Only time will tell if she’ll stick around longer than that.
(Just a parenthesis here: Japanese Breakfast was also nominated for “Best New Artist”, although she’s literally been around for years. I remember being in high school and already listening to her music back then. In the meantime, she’s released three albums and the Grammys jury has just become aware of her.)
“It’s a big deal”–yes it is, Doja ❤
On the more satisfying side of things, it was so cute to see Doja Cat rushing out of the toilet to give an emotional speech about her first Grammy win for “Best Pop Duo or Group Performance”. Her song “Kiss Me More” featuring SZA ended up in my Top 10 of favorite songs of last year, and I listened to it I don’t know how many times. They absolutely deserved it.
That speech made me reflect on how we sometimes forget that celebrities are human beings with passions and dreams, and hearing Doja say “I like to downplay a lot of shit, but this is a… It’s a big deal” was the moment of this otherwise irrelevant edition of the Grammys.
I somehow feel we can all relate to what she was going through. As someone who downplays a lot of achievements myself, I certainly can.
Cover image credits: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for the Recording Academy
Art Kills 
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