Every year the Grammy Awards provoke a lot of curiosity about how the winners are selected and what truly qualifies them. When I think of the Grammy’s I can’t help but think about all the people who get upset when their favorite artist doesn’t win, or the people who think just because their favorite artist or song wins an award that its automatically better, or that the performer is automatically a historical person. No. No they’re not. I’m going to be honest I know little to nothing about how the nominees are selected or even how a winner is selected. But looking at the list of previous winners, in the recent years and beyond, that the award is simply a popularity contest. The nominees this year were Taylor Swift, 1989; Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly; Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color; Chris Stapleton, Traveller; and The Weeknd, Beauty Behind the Madness.
Taylor Swift was ultimately given the award, but I don’t think she deserved it at all. She earned the award for the first time back in 2010. However, i will admit again that The only one of these albums I have heard in it’s entirety is Traveller by Chris Stapleton and it was a truly a spectacular album, cover to cover he put his heart and soul into the music and the album flowed nicely and really stayed consistent with the sound and the theme that he was going for. Stapleton has raw talent that hasn’t been seen in country music for quite some time. He took his career from writing songs for artists like Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan, to writing his own songs and finding the courage to write his own album after losing his dad in 2013 and taking a road trip that inspired the album.
On that note, I think that more needs to be looked than what is the most popular or what sold the most records, but they need to look at the album as a whole, what it means, and what was put into it. Performing songs that some random guy you don’t know wrote doesn’t make you an artist, that doesn’t make it your album, it makes it your performance. Basically I’m saying that these award shows that so many people care so much about are absolute crap, and should not be valued in our society. I’m also saying that our society making music a popularity contest has taken the integrity and individuality out of music. It’s just like anything else in our culture today where we are sucked into garbage and told to like it so we do. And then more and more crap music is produced and sold until we are where we are now where it’s a rarity if a artist can play an instrument let alone write a song that will actually be produced. Our society has grown to love artificial music that has no meaning, and no soul, we have lost the roots of music, and I think the album of the year should be selected because of it’s meaning, passion, and impact on music, not just how many people like it.
A History of Hip Hop Culture 