I am usually not a fan of award shows. It is especially easy to hate on award shows when all you do is look up the winners instead of watching the shows themselves. This year, I wanted to change that by watching the 66th Grammy Awards.
The 66th Grammy Awards, aired on CBS Sunday, is the annual music awards intended to celebrate music. This year’s Grammy Awards included albums from 2022 and 2023. To see the full list of nominations, click here.
Even though I love to keep up with music, this is the first time I have sat down and watched the entire event live, so I was interested to see if my inherent criticisms still held as I watched the show unfold in its entirety.
The aspect of the Grammys I understand the least is the submission window. I understand that if you have the awards ceremony too early, you run the risk of missing albums. There is also the aspect of giving the judges enough time to listen to all the submitted albums. Even I am guilty of this with my own albums of the year list, but the timeline for the Grammy Awards’ submission window makes no sense.
For the 66th Grammy Awards show, the submission timeline went from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 15, 2023, which means one-fourth of the submission window included 2022 albums.
Even though it may not seem like a big deal, having 2022 albums compete with 2023 albums makes it seem that 2023 albums weren’t even good to begin with, which unintentionally degrades the albums that were released in 2023. A lot of great music was released in 2023 and deserves to be celebrated, but that didn’t happen, as there were a lot of 2022 albums that showed up in the major award sections this year, specifically “SOS” by SZA and “Midnights” by Taylor Swift.
I have no issues with either of these albums, which are good in their own rights, but they should have competed with other 2022 albums. The 66th Grammy Awards is mainly meant to celebrate albums released in 2023, and to see two 2022 albums sweep the awards this year was very frustrating. It just undercuts all of the good 2023 albums there were.
For context, the 96th Oscars had a submission window ending on Nov. 18, 2023. As stated before, some movies will be excluded from the awards ceremony due to the timeframe, but the timeline makes a lot more sense to me as it ensures that most of the submissions are 2023 movies.
Because of this window, albums from 2022 have the potential to win an album of the year title for 2023, which doesn’t sit right with me, as each year should only compete with the music released in that year.
Speaking of the music itself, I was pretty disappointed with a lot of the winners this year. The Grammys have always had this weird balance of nominating music based on quality and popularity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as some music is popular for a good reason, but some wins felt completely based on popularity.
For example, Metallica winning Best Metal Performance was very disappointing to see. I love Metallica — they are one of my favorite bands of all time — but their win felt entirely based on them being the most popular metal band of the year and not the quality of the music. It especially doesn’t help that metal as a genre only has one category, which doesn’t allow the academy to see the full scope of metal in this award show.
The big one for me was Taylor Swift’s win for album of the year.
Taylor Swift makes good music — I cannot deny that. However, seeing her take home Album of the Year put a bad taste in my mouth, especially compared to the lineup of other albums that were nominated for this award. It’s more of a question about if they pick these awards based on popularity or quality.
Of course, music is subjective, and I know a lot of people who loved “Midnights.” However, I also know a lot of people who loved “SOS,” “the record,” “GUTS” and “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.” It just leaves me thinking “Midnights” won mainly on its popularity factor, which sucks to see.
There were some wins I was happy to see, like “What Was I Made For” winning Song of the Year, Paramore winning Rock Album of the Year and boygenius winning three awards for Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song and Best Alternative Music Album. These were wins I definitely felt were deserved, as they were both culturally relevant and of excellent quality that rose above the other nominees. Still, the awards were very disappointing to see this year.
Besides my issues with the awards, I really enjoyed the show this year due to the large push to make the Grammys a more inclusive space for different kinds of music and music artists.
Even though the list of awards still has a long way to go, specifically when it has to do with the metal and hip-hop sections, this year presented a bigger roster of performances the Grammys isn’t used to. Burna Boy’s Afrobeats performance was especially exciting to see as it was the first time any music of this genre was performed at the Grammys, which was really cool to see.
Other standout performances included Joni Mitchell performing for the first time at the Grammys and Billy Joel performing his first new song in over 30 years. Seeing older musicians at events like these not only still winning awards, but being highlighted for their contributions to music is just so wholesome to see, especially at an event that mostly consists of younger artists.
What I especially loved about his year were the speeches given by Jay-Z and the Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
Jay-Z’s acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award was amazing to hear. Seeing someone who has made some of the most iconic hip-hop of the last few decades talk about the progression of Black music at the Grammys, from the boycotts to now, was just so cool.
This especially ties into how I feel about Harvey Mason Jr.’s speech. His speech on music being the true form of art that brings everyone together struck such a chord with me as, even when things seem dire and hopeless, music still prevails as the one good thing in the world to connect people together.
This speeches changed my thoughts on this year’s ceremony. Even though I am always a cynic when it comes to award ceremonies like this, it was wholesome to see an event dedicated to celebrating an art form I love. Even though the Grammys has its issues, especially when it comes to the awards themselves, I cannot deny the heart that went into the 66th Grammy Awards and I hope this heart continues to become a large part of the show.
