First off: yes, I liked 1989. I thought it was a great pop album. Yes, I like Taylor Swift…I think she’s a great songwriter and 1989 is her best effort to date. In other years, I would be all on board for 1989 taking home Album of the Year. But here’s the thing: to not give the Album of the Year to To Pimp a Butterfly was a huge misstep. To not give Song of the Year to “Alright” was a huge misstep, too. I’m a little mad, so (as quickly as I could piece it together) here’s some of my thoughts about it.
It doesn’t really surprise me, though. The Grammys have never been been about rewarding good music. It’s about rewarding safe, clean, and sanitized music that is good enough but doesn’t actually reward good music. I see the Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift wins in this light. These were clean and safe options, and they won for not only being good enough but for also charting and selling impressively. Which flies in the face of the intent of the Grammys, to “honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.” Just saying. Those that won tonight were good enough, but they were definitely not the deserving choices*.
So, those were definitely not the options that the Grammys should have picked if they were actually about good music. And here’s the thing: To Pimp a Butterfly is absolutely not a safe option: it’s too incendiary, too adventurous, too messy, too unsettling, and, as I see it, too black to win in a landscape where clean and safe is rewarded so overtly. Its inherent “blackness” threatens the core of the industry, which still tries to maintain its cleanliness and safety, while attempting to marginalize the bold pioneers who take risks to create compelling art. How else could The Heist win over good kid, m.A.A.d. city**? How else could Babel win over channel ORANGE? The O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack over Stankonia***? Tonight’s winning selections were the safe choices by a conservative committee that time and time again takes the easy way out over doing what’s right.
Tonight’s winning selections were the safe choices by a conservative committee that time and time again takes the easy way out over doing what’s right.
Let me caveat this by saying that as I consider and write about this, I’m wholeheartedly being a romantic about the notion that the best music should be rewarded accordingly. History has shown us that this is not the case at all. For that reason, I’ve not followed the Grammys often, but with To Pimp a Butterfly getting the accolades it’s deserved from other outlets, I wondered if the Grammys would recognize that. In that sense, I’ve always been an idealist, so I still hold on to the hope that the Grammys can get it right at least once.
I’ve been meaning to write about To Pimp a Butterfly since its release (so yes, I am incredibly behind on the whole blogging bit), and I guess I have my opportunity now. The sprawl and the uninhibited embrace of its inherent blackness through not only its lyrical vocabulary but also its musical vocabulary make for the greatest album of 2015. But more than that, To Pimp a Butterfly is the one of the most compelling albums I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in the last five years, if not the last 10-15 years, since I first started seriously listening to music.
The fusion of disparate “black” genres, from jazz, funk, R&B, and hip-hop provide the backdrop. Free-flowing, mercurial, and dense, the melting pot of the aforementioned styles consistently surprises and engages listeners through a musicality that seems shambolic and disorganized in parts, but in reality relies on a highly detailed improvisation and complexity that paints a much more vivid picture and backdrop than just a beat and sample ever could. Equal parts hubris, incisive self-examination, self-assurance, political treatise, and beautiful poetry, To Pimp a Butterfly‘s lyrical content captures the state of America right now, one that is still embroiled in and coming to grips with a pervasive race problem.
And it doesn’t tackle these things in a simple-minded manner that attempts to simplify the content of the album into a single zinger or reductionist view. It’s sprawling and complicated, never easy to parse through but always revealing. The story that is told on the album is intense and captures hope, despair, joy, and every possible mix in between as Kendrick’s character ascends to the top of the mountain, falls into the pit of despair, and reconciles all of these into a message of hope, shedding light on the problems that still run rampant today.
So, really, there’s no doubt in my mind that To Pimp a Butterfly completely deserved an Album of the Year win, but the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences thought differently.
What does this all mean? Business as usual for the Grammys. Clean and safe.
What does this all mean? Business as usual for the Grammys. Clean and safe. The feathers of a minority of people (i.e., me) may be ruffled right now but it is regrettably true that this will all likely blow over in a few weeks. If nothing else, the Grammys got a ton of press in the meantime for 1989 winning Album of the Year, since it allowed Taylor Swift to take shots at Kanye West. And truth be told, there’s a solid chance that I’ll forget all about this snubbing and be on my way within a week or two, complaining about inconsistency of The Life of Pablo or fawning over the soon-to-be-released Animal Collective record.
But yet again, the Grammys failed at their mission to reward the best music out there. At the very least, Kendrick rightly took home Best Rap Album, and can rest easy knowing that To Pimp a Butterfly will likely have a much longer-lasting impact on music and American society than 1989.
*Alabama Shakes’ Sound and Color would have also been a deserving choice, though Sound & Color vs. 1989 isn’t as clear cut as To Pimp a Butterfly vs. 1989 is. Of the other nominations for Song of the Year, “Thinking Out Loud” is the closest contender in my eyes, but that doesn’t say much when “Alright” beats “Thinking Out Loud” and the rest of the competition by such a wide margin.
** Whether good kid, m.A.A.d. city should have won over Random Access Memories is a much more interesting question. I would guess that The Heist taking Best Rap Album inherently ruled it out from taking the Album of the Year award. This case is certainly not as clear cut of a scenario as this year’s was. Should it have probably one? On a given day you could convince me, but Random Access Memories is actually a fantastic, top notch record.
*** These examples are the more obvious cases among many snubs. These albums in particular were challenging in their music and content and were summarily snubbed for more sanitized and safer choices.
BACK ON THE GRIND 