Folks, to be completely honest, the Grammy’s give me a headache and they are the bane of my EGOTing existence. There are 78 categories for the love of everything holy! 78 categories! Come on… that’s just ridiculous!
Listen, I totally understand that it takes different skills and talents to produce different genres of music; just like it takes different skills and talents to act in a Horror film verses a Comedy verses a Drama. However, come awards season, at some point you have to say enough is enough!
Sure, it’s not abnormal for an Awards Ceremonies to honor separate genres. The Tony Awards honor Musicals, Straight Plays, and Revivals separately. The Emmy Awards honor Dramas, Comedies, TV Movies, and Mini-Series Separately. And even the Oscars have separate categories for Animated, Documentary, and Foreign Films.
However, the Oscars do not hand out separate awards for every conceivable genre like ‘Best Live Action Family Film’, or ‘Best Actor in a Horror Film’, or ‘Best Director of a Dramatic-Comedy’. Just the idea of giving out such awards seems ridiculous… however, in my opinion; this ridiculousness is exactly what the Grammy Awards are doing.
Check out the THIRTY different areas the Grammy’s honor and the number of awards they give out for each:
General/All-Around Awards: 4; Pop: 4; Dance/Electronic: 2; Traditional Pop: 1; Rock: 4 (Including a special category for ‘Hard Rock/Metal’); Alternative Rock: 1; R&B: 4 (Including a special category for ‘Traditional R&B’); Rap: 4 (Including a special category for ‘Rap Collaborations with Singers’); Country: 4; New Age: 1; Jazz: 4 (Including special categories for ‘Improvised’, ‘Vocal’, ‘Instrumental’ and ‘Ensemble’); Gospel: 5 (Including special categories for ‘Contemporary Christian’); Latin: 4 (Separate categories for ‘Banda’, ‘Tropical’, ‘Pop/Rock/Urban’, and ‘Mexican’); American Roots: 4 (Including Blues, Folk, Bluegrass… and ‘Americana’); Reggae: 1; Children: 1; World Music: 1; Comedy: 1; Spoken Word: 1; Music for Visual Media: 3; Musical Theatre: 1; Composing/Arranging: 3; Packing: 2; Historical: 1; Album Notes: 1; Production (Non-Classical): 3 (Including a special category for ‘Remixing’); Production (Classical): 3; Surround Sound: 1; Classical: 6; Music Video: 2;
And honestly, if the breakdown doesn’t seem odd enough, let me take a minute to point out some major inconsistencies:
1. Why does Latin Music get FOUR awards, while the rest of the world gets only ONE?
2. Why do genres like Traditional Pop, Alternative, New Age, Reggae, and Children’s only get ONE award for ‘Best Album’, when other genres also get awards for ‘Best Song’, ‘Best Solo Performance’, and ‘Best Duo/Group Performance’? Who decides that?
3. Beyond all of the ‘Parent’ genre’s being honored… why are there so many sub-genre’s getting separate awards?
Perhaps I’m just a crotchety old man… I love music! I really do! I have a very eclectic music collection consisting of all the before mentioned styles… so I am definitely not questioning the legitimacy of the various genres and sub-genres… just the need for 78 different awards.
And truth be told… the legitimacy of some of these awards need to be questioned when you see how some artist are able to cross over into multiple genres:
The Foo Fighters: nominated for ‘Best Rock Performance’ and ‘Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance’… um… okay?
Coldplay: nominated for ‘Best Pop Duo/Group Performance’, while they are also nominated for ‘Best Rock Performance’ and ‘Best Rock Song’. I’m confused… is Coldplay a Pop or a Rock band?
Radiohead: nominated for ‘Best Rock Song’ and ‘Best Rock Performance’… but instead of being nominated for ‘Best Rock Album’, they are nominated for ‘Best Alternative Album’. Does anyone else find this a bit strange?
Foster the People: nominated for ‘Best Pop Duo/Group Performance’ and ‘Best Alternative Album’.
When there is this much cross over, the field becomes muddled and confusing. Unnecessary.
The Grammy’s should keep their four overall awards for Artist, Album, Song, and New Artist… but they really need to do a few things to clean up the rest of the show:
1. Artists/Songs/Albums should only be allowed to compete in one genre. Precedence: At the Emmy Awards, actors from Dramatic Comedies are not allowed to compete in both the Drama and Comedy categories for the same show. Actors on Comedy shows are not allowed to compete in the Drama category just because they didn’t an episode with a ‘serious’ subject matter, or vice versa.
2. Get rid of all sub-genre awards.
3. Only give out three awards for each parent genre: ‘Best Written Song’, ‘Best Album’, and ‘Best Performance’.
In closing, the most shocking thing about the Grammy’s 78 awards, is that their actually down from last year, when they had 109 awards! Ridiculous. Well… keep working Grammy’s!
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