Awards shows are naturally going to draw scrutiny given how widely varied the tastes and experiences of their viewers are. And yet, it often seems like they’re doing everything in their power to attract as much negative attention as possible. The Oscars have already been a lightning rod for controversy given the lack of diversity in this year’s nominees, and the Golden Globes will likely go without a host after Ricky Gervais’ spectacle a few weeks ago. However, perhaps no awards ceremony has been as scrutinized as the Grammys with extensive allegations of misconduct coming from former Academy executive Deborah Dugan. Essentially, Dugan’s complaint confirms what many of us have long thought about the Recording Academy — that it’s an out-of-touch, exclusionary “boys’ club” more concerned with minimizing scandal than picking representative and exciting music.
I get the sense that very few people with even a remote amount of respect for popular music care much about what the Grammys consider good. The ceremony has been a laughing stock for years, repeatedly making absurd choices (like awarding Best Rap Album of 2014 to Macklemore’s “The Heist” over releases from Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Drake). The problem is that there’s no worthwhile alternative to the Grammys, so everyone is forced to talk about it as if it were a show worthy of such attention.
The Academy also makes some weird designations regarding the genre of certain songs and albums, not only highlighting how arbitrary such labels are but also how they can pigeonhole minorities into certain categories. The fact that “Best Urban Contemporary Album” is still a category in 2020 speaks volumes about how far behind the times the ceremony is. Tyler, The Creator, who won Best Rap Album for “Igor,” called out the Academy in a backstage interview for shutting him and other black artists out of categories aside from rap, saying, “It sucks that whenever we — and I mean guys that look like me — do anything that's genre-bending ... they always put it in a rap or urban category… When I hear that, I'm just like why can't we be in pop?”
Tyler’s complaint echoes those of other era-defining black artists like Frank Ocean, who famously refused to submit his 2016 album “Blonde” for nominations, citing the Grammys’ treatment of artists of color.
In fairness to the Academy, this year was an improvement in some ways. Billie Eilish was the night’s big winner, sweeping four major categories and taking home five trophies overall. While Eilish is a talented and forward-thinking young artist, the Academy could have given at least one of these awards to someone else, especially considering how dominant pop artists have been in these categories over the last decade. The other big winner of the night was Lizzo with three wins, although none of them were in a non-genre-specific category. Ultimately, who won this year wasn’t as much of an issue. Rather, it’s that a lot of the selections feel disingenuous given the scandals surrounding the Academy.
Even if this year’s winners were less infuriating, the actual ceremony itself is still an overlong, commercial-riddled slog that seems to give out fewer awards every year despite constantly getting lengthier. (This year’s ceremony was almost a devastating four hours.) Much more time is dedicated to the performances, which are ironically the biggest reason to tune in to the awards show. The Grammys’ odd status as an awards ceremony-concert hybrid ends up providing a few outstanding performances each year, like this year’s performances by Lil Nas X, Rosalía, Tyler, The Creator and a tribute to Kobe Bryant from Alicia Keys and Boys II Men. These were, however, accompanied by a few uncomfortable performances, none more so than the strange, propaganda-esque tribute to the show’s retiring producer Ken Ehrlich.
While I’m glad the four-hour show does have the performances to break up the monotony, it begs the question: does the awards half need to exist at all, or would we all be better off with a three-hour concert? After all, do we need to hear what a bunch of industry insiders cynically pick as the year’s best when the internet provides us with so many other ways of discovering music?
Looking at the winners of recent Grammys can provide a false gleam of hope. While some major awards have gone to deserving young artists like Kacey Musgraves and Childish Gambino, don’t let one area of improvement fool you. The Grammys still have a laundry list of problems that they’d better address if they want to fix their plummeting ratings. Let’s face it: the Grammys need to change their antiquated selection process as quickly as possible, and giving a couple of trophies to Lizzo isn’t going to do it.
