Once again, Grammy time has rolled around-don't get too excited. The Grammy's are traditionally seen as the laughingstock of music award shows. This year the tradition continues as the majority of nominees have not demonstrated the best in what music offers. In the spirit of a homogenized music scene, the Grammy's, much like the MTV award shows, honor bands undeserving of prestigious awards.
The Recording Academy has once again failed to recognize the worthy bands and albums that have emerged this year.
At last year's Grammy's, notables like The White Stripes and Outkast were in the running for \Album of the Year."" However, this year things are much different without one clearly ""good"" album up for the award. Nominees this year include Green Day, Alicia Keys, Usher, Ray Charles and Kanye West. The albums in this category do not showcase the diversity of great music available. They forgot to include Brian Wilson's masterpiece, ""Smile"" and other much more notable albums.
The weak selections continue for the ""Best New Artist"" award. Nominees such as Los Lonely Boys, Gretchen Wilson, Maroon 5 and Joss Stone are not the best representatives of this category.
These artists get the nods while the category ignores true breakout artists such as Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Ambulance LTD, Muse, Arcade Fire and Secret Machines. Any of these artists would be more worthy, yet this category denied them the recognition they deserved.
Other problems facing the Academy are the alternative categories. They should be expanded to include awards for best alternative song and performance. These added awards will allow more bands to receive nominations and less overlaps between ""rock"" and ""alternative."" It would also be nice if an ""independent"" category was added into the mix, but we'll take things one at a time.
Perhaps the biggest and most pleasurable surprise lies in the nominees for ""Best Female Pop Performance"" with Gwen Stefani's ""What You Waiting For,"" Bjork's ""Oceania,"" and Norah Jones' ""Sunrise."" These three demonstrate talent and deserve their nominations. It is interesting they are up for the ""pop"" category and not Britney Spears or Ashlee Simpson. At least the Academy recognized talented musicians who know how to sing and perform.
Other surprises include the Scissor Sisters up for ""Best Dance Recording"" and The Shins nominated for ""Best Recording Package."" When only three out of 107 categories of nominations are pleasing, however, it shows how the Recording Academy did a disservice to the majority of bands who deserve recognition.
The Recording Academy has conveniently and sadly forgotten to nominate some of the best bands of the year such as The Hives, The Strokes, Muse, Polyphonic Spree and Death Cab for Cutie. These bands all released amazing albums this year, but unfortunately received no nominations for their achievements.
While the Grammy's may be a joke, they could still be worth checking out this Sunday on CBS. It actually may be entertaining since Duff McKagan and Slash, members of Velvet Revolver, are nominated for awards. Who knows, maybe they will have another ""language malfunction"" like they did back in 1990.
Beth Wick is upset that of 107 Grammy categories, there is not one for ""Most Rocking Columnist"" She can be reached at eawick@wisc.edu
