Snarking on the Grammys is a fun, easy, popular exercise, which means another blog post bemoaning who lost and who won is, well, pointless.
Instead, I’ll enumerate how many winners just happen to be in my music collection already. That’s probably a better gauge on how little the awards really affect my listening habits.
Of all the winners from the 2004 awards, the only albums I already possess are:
OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below — OutKast deserved anything they won, but for all the ink spilled on how Andre 3000 made a really, really far-out record, I don’t think neither he nor the Flaming Lips could ever imagine anything that sounds like Shiina Ringo’s Karuki Zaamen Kuri no Hana.
Café Tacvba, Cuatro Caminos — Molotov’s Dance and Dense Denso and Yerba Buena’s President Alien were both nominated in the same category (Best Latin Alternative Album). All three deserved an award.
Kronos Quartet with Dawn Upshaw, Alban Berg: Lyric Suite — Kronos Quartet tends to win Grammys for albums I don’t really like. And this isn’t even an album — it’s a single.
Missy Elliott, “Work It“ — This song is so 2002.
Various artists, The Neptunes Present … Clones — Hell ya, they’re the producers of the year.
So — given all that intersection, does this mean I’m getting into hip-hop?
Miscellaneous comments …
- I’m so happy Evanescence won the Grammy for Best New Artist. That’s a band that deserves to have its career deemed obsolete.
- Emmylou Harris usually has a lock on the Contemporary Folk Album — never mind she isn’t a folk singer — but I think Warren Zevon won it this year ‘cos, well, he’s dead.