The Grammy Awards to End All Grammy Awards (Hopefully)

By: Sebastian Cruz | Contributor

There are people who still care about the Grammy Awards, right? I ask this question not out of journalistic snark, but to arm myself with general opinion. It’s important to get a litmus test to keep in mind when examining the most controversial night in music. But it really isn’t, is it? How long have we been saying this about the Grammys—that THIS current one, that THIS particular year, we should rise above it. The acknowledgement of the discourse (and discourse about the discourse) is expected to come part and parcel with every awards season. Even across mediums, no matter if from the big and little screens (and stage. I haven’t had any Tonys upsets cross over to me but I know they must happen.) 

So for its 66th edition, there should be the expectation that what will happen will be as rote as the other 3, 4, 65 times. And you know what? It was. It was so rote and pitch-perfectly Academy that it needn’t have happened. For all intents and purposes, the ceremony could have been under a government-issued media embargo and we would have gotten every single win correct. 

So why even talk about it? For better and worse, the ceremony is sort of the best reflection of the industry at large. At REALLY large. It’s the sort of comprehensive macro view we don’t get any other night of the year. Each win given not only documents the music industry’s force and will, but also spotlights the most popular, or at the very least most visible, artists and music acts today. And if not today, then at least 50 years ago, because if there’s anything that the recording industry loves most it’s legacy acts. Old favorites like the Foo Fighters and Metallica are given default honorable mentions for being the last pre-decade rock bands the academy are wont to acknowledge. 

Speaking of rocking and rolling, the imperial era of the boygenius boys was capped off in an institutional fashion, as the supergroup rounded up three awards in the Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song and Best Alternative Music Album categories (with platinum blonde Bridgers taking home Best Pop Duo Performance for her collaboration with SZA.) Bridgers’ righteous condemnation of ex-Academy honcho Neil Portnow notwithstanding, boygenius’ reign over the noms and wins alike represent the Academy’s indie darling pick for the year (as close to “indie” as the Academy will allow, anyhow.) It’s so very rare that songwriters of their station and status are lauded across all three critical scrutinies: critical, institutional, and fanatical. Announcing their hiatus before earning their flowers was the savviest thing they could have done.

The other major categories, however, was a less satisfying drag through the Academy’s rigamarole. Hip-hops record-breaking (or record-protecting?) nadir in 2023 is rendered beautifully in the rap categories’ dominant sweeper: Atlantan veteran Killer Mike. His personal regard for both the police and the practice of landlording (for which he makes numerous brags about on his latest album) doesn’t exactly paint him as an artist who is on the pulse. It makes almost perfect sense that he won all three of the major rap categories with his album MICHAEL and song “Scientists & Engineers” respectively. (Side note, would anyone have given a shit about the latter song if André 3000 hadn’t been on it? Much to think about.) 

My condemnation of these results comes not because of who won, but because of who lost. Littered among the nominees are rappers and performers whose inclusion feels like choices the Academy defaults to in the case of a weak year for rap: Drake and Metro Boomin albums from 2022, Travis Scott’s Yeezus-lite Utopia that fills in the gap of “vaguely trendy enough to hype up adolescent hip-hop die-hards”, a little bit of Nas only because Jay-Z didn’t release anything, and I can’t believe I have to say this, but Ice Spice should not have gotten her first music nomination joined at the hip with Nicki “Fall of Roman” Minaj. Better luck next year, I suppose.

You can tell a lot about a specific Grammy Awards season just based solely on who walked away with the Big 4: Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. The name of the game this time around was a mixed bag. The best new artists were a surprisingly well-rounded group, all the way from folk rock star Noah Kahan to downtempo peddler Fred again.., from soul-bearing recovering addict rapper Jelly Roll to the increasingly ascendant Ice Spice. Victoria Monét’s win, however, is proof enough of the Academy’s prescience to justify the 67th go-around (I’m mostly kidding.) And though it’s not what I would have chosen, there were a lot worse options for Song of the Year than Billie Eilish’s Greta Gerwig’s Barbie’s “What Was I Made For? [From the Motion Picture “Barbie”]. 

Let’s get this out of the way now: Miley Cyrus won two Grammys for her song “Flowers”, and that’s just a real shame. Arguably the most interesting pop star we still have, Cyrus’ career trajectory is something music journalists dream about at night. So it’s with great resignation that we accept that the first music that gets the institutional touch of approval is a song for which all personality and color dissipates, like the pop equivalent of a singularity.

But all wins are not created equal. With the inclusion of Taylor Swift’s 2022 release Midnights for Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year, there would doubtless be an equally strong reaction for if she lost or won. In all possible outcomes, not everyone is happy about it. And wouldn’t you know it, she takes home both awards. This was, of course, the logical endpoint to Swift’s ascendancy as pop culture godhead. In my mind, there was never any other way it was going to go. And so the gears turn— new year, new album, new era, same, same old T-Swizzle. 

It’s my prediction that Swift will not have that moment again. She’s going to be just as big if not (somehow) bigger than she was last year, and yet the Academy has machinations that stretch beyond the scope of just one (still huge) pop star. I can never stay mad at them, not because they aren’t under the hand of the corporate industry dream machine, but because they are the corporate dream machine examining itself and saying “we’re doing pretty damn well, if we don’t say so ourselves.” The 66th Grammys are not anything out of the ordinary. As rote as it is consistent, as baffling as it is boring. And by the following week, hardly anyone remembers that it even happened.