“You gotta sell it to snatch the Grammy.” It was Chance the Rapper who spoke these words on Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam,” and it seems now more than ever, with the recent announcement of the Grammy nominations for the upcoming awards ceremony in February, Chance’s rhymes prove relevant. We associate the Grammy with annual excellence in music, the quality selection of a given year’s releases, the best of the best in terms of music.
With this year’s crop of nominees, it’s clear that the focus on the music itself has been lost. Instead, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the illustrious awards event, seems to be more preoccupied with record sales and fiscal elements than with the art, more concerned with quantity over quality. It has become a question of “how much” instead of “how good.”
This conviction manifests itself in the list of nominees, specifically the “Album of the Year” category. We see that Adele’s “25,” Drake’s “Views,” Justin Bieber’s “Purpose,” Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” and Sturgill Simpson’s “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth” made the list. On Billboard’s year-end chart for 2016, for which rankings are determined by album sales, the top five albums are “25,” “Views,” “Purpose,” “Lemonade,” and Rihanna’s “Anti.” Four out of the five albums nominated for Album of the Year are the four top-grossing albums of 2016, according to Billboard. This simply can’t be coincidence.
Pitchfork, a web magazine solely devoted to music and regarded as a sound voice in the community, issued a list of the highest-rated albums of 2016, declaring Chance the Rapper’s “Coloring Book,” Radiohead’s “A Moon Shaped Pool,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “We got it from Here…Thank you 4 Your service,” Bon Iver’s “22, A Million” to be in the top five. Clearly, there exists a disconnect, a chasm between quality and quantity.
This devaluation of music as an art form is discouraging. In this way, the Grammys are rewarding music that sells and earns money rather than music that speaks to the listeners, carries a message, and conveys something creatively unique. The Grammys should be a time to honor the art form of music, to look back on the year and reminisce on the diversity of sound and breadth of creation. It shouldn’t be a night of chart-toppers and club hits that went platinum.
Earlier this year, before releasing their list of nominees for the 2017 ceremony, the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences issued a statement that albums and content released digitally through streaming-only websites, like Spotify, Apple Music, or Tidal, would be eligible for consideration for awards. Previously, only official commercial releases were considered. This marginal leap, spearheaded by Chance the Rapper and other independent artists who petitioned for the Academy to extend consideration to more artists, demonstrated a meaningful step for the Grammys, a step towards honoring quality music and well-deserving artists over financial successes.
While this decision was widely regarded as a positive move for the entire music community, it presents a chance for the Academy to direct the Grammys’ emphasis more toward music that deserves recognition for its quality. And while the current method for selecting nominees asks Academy members to consider solely the value of the music, we might need a renewed emphasis on this point.
Good music needs the recognition it deserves regardless of how much money it makes or how many times it is played on the radio. Sometimes it’s easy to forget, but music is an art. Even though it’s a part of our everyday lives, music demands respect and recognition in the same light as any other art form. We have to appreciate the creativity and intention behind the tunes we jam to every day, and that can start with the biggest music event of the year.
As artists like Frank Ocean, A Tribe Called Quest, Bon Iver, and Anderson Paak stand symbolically empty-handed of the much-deserved recognition that they deserve this year at the Grammys, we are reminded of the current shift in music. But as we’ve seen time and time again, artists devoted to the craft are unrelenting. They don’t stop, and they won’t stop. It’s up to us to recognize their efforts. It doesn’t matter if an album went platinum or not; tell me how it sounded.
Kaveh Badrei is a freshman from Houston, Texas. He can be reached at kbadrei@princeton.edu.
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