Tonight marks the 58th annual Grammy Awards Ceremony. To summarize, The Grammys were created to recognize the best in music whether it be in production, single songs, or music genres. On its surface, there's not a whole lot wrong with it. Much like The Academy Awards or The Emmys, the award is supposed to recognize the peaks of talent within that industry. However, there hasn't been any industry that's quite as complicated to properly assess as that of music. While it can do its best to recognize Top 40 hits, it isn't as keen on recognizing as much of the best as other niche awards. In fact, The Grammys as an award kind of suck, and I think it's mostly because of its subjective use in pop culture.
Admittedly, I am not the target commentator for The Grammys. I haven't watched the ceremony in almost a decade, and I cannot even recall any of the winners of the top categories from any year ever. In fact, I am likely not the best when it comes to discussing music, as I am more of a casual listener than those who listen to the radio and buy albums in whatever format they are now. Yet to me, there's something that is fundamentally wrong with The Grammys on the general basis of how music is consumed. To put it simply, music isn't what it used to be.
I'm not talking directly in the quality department. I am mostly talking about how one approaches music. You see, there's something almost too tangible about music. It's three minutes of audio that can be played at a cafe with an acoustic guitar. The medium is known for covering anything to make it catchy in a different respect. It's the general appeal of music. I respect that there are those that put a lot of work into the production side of things, but there are those who play that guitar in that cafe without any talent and confidence. Some of the best songs in history are 4/4 signatures repeated for a few minutes. There's also a lot of bad songs written that way. To be frank, it's almost too easy to write a song nowadays.
However, it is also far different from the pre-millennial release. Whereas movies have box office receipts and TV shows have (albeit dated) Nielsen ratings, there's no legitimate way to chronicle album sales. Yes, the Billboard Charts are technically the *it* in this equation. However, that was a period where music was consumed through limited ways: the radio, concerts, and physical purchases. One could assess the popular music based on radio plays, ticket sales of concerts, and even the black-and-whitest of them all: album sales. While the politics behind the profits (which are themselves ridiculously slanted) have remained consistent, it's the release schedule that has become problematic.
True, the digital era has made consuming content much more difficult. TV now accounts in part for online original programming. Movies are also able to be released through on demand services. However, there's still the sense that the head honchos are going to the big leagues of theaters and major cable channels. As for music, it's impossible to gauge just what anything will look like. For starters, the content that radio can play is far more limited due to censorship laws (such as absence of profanity and sometimes risque content). This doesn't remain a problem if you're squeaky clean, but it becomes the start when you realize that music got screwed over the most following the rise of digital content in the early 00's.
One could start by blaming Napster, which gained notoriety as one of the first major music file sharing websites. It didn't help that Steve Jobs introduced the iPod a few years later and made content able to be sold exclusively through digital platforms. Suddenly, the release model became more muddled with varying results. There are those that say that $9.99 for what amounts to 13 digital files of songs, is an egregious rip-off. Some have cornered the market for sales through this method, but the fact is that music's availability becomes tricky after this. You have those that release it for cheap/free competing with those that release it in a somewhat traditional model. Then you get those, such as Kanye West's latest "The Life of Pablo," that release it randomly and without word through streaming services. Add in the availability of music through services like YouTube and Spotify, and you begin to ask yourself: Why even buy the music?
Tangibility is a big issue and why music got screwed over the most following the digital era. The fact is that there's now no proper way to gauge the media's output. Even if you exclude illegal torrents, what is your measurement of success? Music videos aren't the stimulating catapults that they once were. I guess that one could look at YouTube views, but even that doesn't reflect the quality of music - where mediocre songs can get recognized practically for pulling crazy stunts that get attention. They don't have to be good. They just have to be memorable.
What does this all have to do with The Grammys? Well, they are supposed to be the award that recognizes talent. While I will admit that they have done a solid job in the wake of everything, there's still the sense that it isn't reflective of music as a whole. The medium is ever-expanding and it becomes difficult not to just reward the same offenders over and over. It is true that every ceremony has their weaknesses, but it becomes hard to really respect something that rewards Record of the Year to Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody"; a song that hasn't held up in the many years since its release. Also, the mislabeling of genres has even resulted in bands like Pearl Jam publicly claiming that the award could mean nothing.
It's a confusing time to be a musician and I don't envy those that have to struggle to get success. It takes craft to write a great song. However, it is difficult to take The Grammys as seriously as the various other big shows largely because in their attempt to recognize everything, they recognize the same old faces. It isn't like The Country Music Awards or MTV Music Awards, where they are appealing to a demographic. The Grammys are meant to appeal to everyone, and I doubt that they would be able to do even if they figured out how to measure who were the Top 5 most popular bands of any given year. Music is possibly more subjective than TV or film because of its tangibility and its brief existence. A song can be moving, but it will be over within five minutes.
It is generally why I am more likely to respect niche award shows over The Grammys. While I think that awards themselves aren't an end-all to the quality music debate, there's definitely a lot more focus and reverence in smaller awards that actually feel like they reward talent instead of trying to figure out how Jethro Tull was a metal band. While one could argue that The Grammys is all just an excuse to see bands rock the stage, even that is a tough sell. There's so many venues that you can watch these acts perform right now, or in six weeks, or in 20 years. The digital age has made music more accessible, and in the process ruined the general appeal of winning a Grammy.
Comments
Post a Comment