I have written before of my fondness for Childish Gambino. I hope that Donald Glover wins Record of the Year for This is America. But at the same time, I think the Grammy nomination may be a nod to Glover's social commentary, not necessarily for his musical content.
So I reviewed the rest of the Record of the Year nominees and decided....
That I can't listen to this crap.
I'm going back in time instead.
The year was 1989 and Metallica had just been screwed out of a Grammy by Jethro Tull. They were on top of the Metal World and the 4 musicians pummeled the crowd with a barrage of metal. There was no better Thrash Metal than Metallica in 1989.
In 1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood hit the world by storm with the album Welcome to the Pleasuredome. They lost the Grammy for Best New Artist to Cyndi Lauper and would blow apart by the end of the decade. The young lads from England would only capture that spark of greatness once. But in 2004 they performed the equivalent of cold fusion and somehow, someway convinced 4 of the 5 original members to return, then they replaced Holly Johnson with someone even gayer... and it was phenomenal.
Back in the year 2010, Judas Priest won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance for a live version of their 33 year old song Dissident Aggressor. That same year, a band from Norway called the Shining, an experimental metal band that merged jazz and metal, was redefining metal under Grammy's nose. Exit Sun will melt your face off.
Did you know that Jimmy Fallon won a Grammy? Yeah, let's not talk about that. Who should have won that Grammy? Tenacious D.
The Best Rap Song Grammy was introduced in 2004. It quickly became one of the most popular Grammy Awards. I think I'll go slightly farther back in time than that.
Like 1998....
Or 1993....
Or 1987...
Instead of continuing to bitch about what Grammy got wrong, (pretty much everything), let's try a different tack. Let's find out when Grammy correctly found a young talent, on top of their game, and was vindicated by time.
Uh.....
I'm lookin'...
I'm lookin'.....
Back in 1974, child prodigy Stevie Wonder was all grown up. Now a 24 year old man, Wonder won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song with Superstition. One of the greatest songs in all of R&B history, 1974 was the year Wonder cemented his legacy.
What?
You want another example?
Man you're killin' me. It was hard enough to find one example. What I didn't say earlier is that Wonder signed with his Motown label at 11. By the time he won the Grammy, he'd been around for a decade. You might not have heard of 'em, but Motown fans surely had.
I'm lookin'...
I'm lookin'.....
Back in 1992, the band DC Talk won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Gospel Album. The members were all in their twenties and the band were on top of the world covering the Doobie Brothers' classic Jesus Is Just Alright.
DC Talk, or individual members of DC Talk, basically won half the Grammys in the Best Rock Gospel Album category before the category itself was discontinued in 2012. The Grammys awarded DC Talk their trophy before the release of arguably the greatest Christian Rock album of all time, Jesus Freak.
Again, the Grammys are awesome at recognizing greatness 20 years late, or mediocrity right on time.