Now that I think about it, before last Sunday I’d never
watched an entire Grammy Awards telecast. Actually, I still
haven’t. I just couldn’t make it.
Sandwiched between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, the biggest
night in music really just amounts to a production that’s
horribly out of tune. From philosophy to production, the Grammy
Awards need a television makeover. The Recording Academy should
start taking notes from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and
the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Science.
Simply put, here are three major problems with the Grammys and
the steps the Recording Academy could take to make an interesting
(or at least watchable) awards show:
“¢bull; Identity crisis: Like the Tony Awards, the Grammy
telecast can’t decide if it wants to be an awards show or a
giant concert. Overstuffed with musical performances that force the
award presentations into commercial time, the Grammys seem centered
on getting as many musicians on stage performing as humanly
possible.
If the Grammy Awards telecast was billed as a concert, that
would be fine. But since the word “awards” is in the
show’s title, it makes sense to pay some attention to the
them. And unlike concerts, awards make for good television. The
Oscars are watched until the end because people actually want to
know what wins Best Picture; no Grammy holds the same amount of
clout.
Drama and conflict create good television, and by focusing more
on the prestige and presentation of the uncertainty of the awards
and less on the scheduled performances, the Grammys would be more
interesting to watch.
“¢bull; Too many awards: By giving out so many awards for the
same thing (best album) in different genres, the Recording Academy
diminishes its prestige. The Golden Globes commit the same crime on
a smaller scale with multiple Best Pictures (one for drama, one for
musical or comedy), but again the Oscars have it right, giving out
one, and only one, Best Picture award.
While the field of music is certainly more diverse in styles
than film, the Motion Picture Academy understands that to create
awards people care about, you have to limit the number of awards
available. This practice pits a film like “Lost in
Translation” against “The Lord of the Rings: The Return
of the King,” creating a debate of film style to go along
with substance.
A more limited Best Album Grammy category could pit albums
against each other in the same way. Imagine debating between
OutKast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,”
Radiohead’s “Hail to the Thief,” and a widely
unknown, but exceptional jazz album. Not only would it be more
difficult to pick a winner, but it would be more interesting to
find out who wins.
“¢bull; Stop awarding commercial success: Nominating Missy
Elliott, Evanesence, OutKast (who eventually won), Justin
Timberlake and The White Stripes for Album of the Year is
approximately equivalent to nominating “The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King,” “Finding Nemo,”
“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
Pearl,” “The Matrix Reloaded” and “Bruce
Almighty” for Best Picture, simply because they made a lot of
money at the box office during the year. Sure, some of the
top-grossing films and best-selling albums are successful because
they are good, but Grammy nominations shouldn’t be a
corollary to going platinum.
While the Recording Academy states Grammys are awarded
“for artistic or technical achievement, not sales or chart
positions,” this rarely seems to be the case, especially when
three of the five nominated Best Albums are still on
Billboard’s Top 100 list, two of which are in the top
four.
By honoring music advancing the art instead of music that sells
a lot of albums, the Grammys would become more dramatic. The
producers of the Oscars have established and maintained an awards
show that, when it comes right down to it, people care about for
the awards, not the spectacle.
And that must be the ultimate goal.
If you have other suggestions, e-mail them to Tracer at
jtracer@media.ucla.edu.