Grammy lessons

Stephen Dalton

• Last Updated: February 04. 2009 2:50PM UAE / February 4. 2009 10:50AM GMT

Beyoncé Knowles and Tina Turner perform during the 50th annual Grammy Awards in 2008. Kevin Winter / Getty Images

This Sunday, the 51st annual Grammy Awards will bring together four generations of rock, pop and soul superstars for the music industry’s premiere prize-giving gala in Los Angeles.

As ever, the biggest-selling artists of the previous year top the nominations list. Leading the hip-hop field are Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Ne-Yo and Jay-Z. In rock: Coldplay, Radiohead and Metallica. Representing the older generation: Robert Plant, Neil Diamond and The Eagles. Several leading nominees will also perform live, as will Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl.

To its champions, the Grammys bash offers a little bit of everything in one shamelessly glitzy package; to its detractors, a whole lot of nothing besides a cynical marketing opportunity. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but this year’s gala is certainly notable for its stellar guest list and unusually high percentage of British acts.

Radiohead’s presence is particularly interesting, since the critically revered band has shunned previous Grammy galas. This year they finally agreed to perform live, and even appeared in promotional adverts for the ceremony. On Sunday they are likely to win prizes for their album In Rainbows – an innovative online smash that some claim has rendered major record labels redundant. Perhaps, in an age of falling CD sales and corporate panic, these donnish rockers are feeling charitable towards the industry.

Grammy bosses like to present their gala as the musical equivalent of Oscar night, a celebration of both talent and success, glamour and creativity. At the very least, this is the one event in the rock calendar with the clout to bring together unique superstar pairings: Elton John and Eminem in 2001, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello in 2003, Beyoncé and Tina Turner last year.

Bono is a multiple Grammy winner and, perhaps not surprisingly, a fan. In his introduction to Ken Ehrlich’s 2007 book At The Grammys, the U2 singer defends the ceremony he once derided, calling it a “car crash between art and commerce” and “a mad amalgam of the profound and the absurd” which proves that “one man’s Mozart is another man’s Vegas”.

Other industry insiders are less charitable. Dan Kennedy is a former marketing executive for the Atlantic label and author of the excellent music-business memoir Rock On. “Grammy night is basically all about taking one night a year to dress up the process of making the sausage,” Kennedy says. “So in case anyone looks to see how the sausage is made, they see people in nice suits and gorgeous gowns walking into a glamorous ceremony, as opposed to seeing blood and guts coming out of a huge machine in a creepy factory.”

Many musicians are privately scathing about their industry’s biggest backslapping beanfeast, but remain diplomatic in public. After all, a Grammy prize tends to boost album sales considerably: Bob Dylan’s Time out of Mind saw a four-fold leap following his 1997 win, while Taking the Long Way by the Dixie Chicks enjoyed a 700 per cent sales spike in 2007.

However, some high-profile winners have spoken out against the awards. In 2007, Trent Reznor of the industrial outfit Nine Inch Nails slammed the Grammys on his official website, despite a career that includes two wins and 12 nominations. The progressive rockers Tool also won Grammys in 1998 and 2001 but refused to attend the ceremony.

“The Grammys are nothing more than some gigantic promotional machine for the music industry,” Tool’s singer, Maynard James Keenan, told NY Rock magazine in 2002. “They cater to a low intellect and they feed the masses. They don’t honour the arts or the artist for what he created. It’s the music business celebrating itself.”

Even since its inception, the Grammys has been criticised for its mainstream leanings. Established in 1958 by the LA-based National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS), the Gramophone Awards were modelled on the Oscars, with music-industry insiders deciding winners from their own shortlist of candidates. The awards were initially conceived as a bulwark against the vulgar rising tide of rock and roll, and some would argue that they have remained behind the times ever since.

During its first 40 years, the Academy failed to acknowledge milestone recordings by Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Marvin Gaye, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley and other legends. Instead, they favoured light entertainers and family-friendly crooners, many now long forgotten. The fabled Motown label won just one Grammy during its entire 1960s heyday. Major musical movements such as hip-hop and grunge took years to register on the NARAS radar.

“It’s no surprise that there’s a certain tendency towards middle-of-the-road consensus,” says Ned Raggett, an LA-based music critic, author and blogger. “A lot of it boils down to the age of the voters combined with a desire to seem somehow reasonably of its time but unable to fully come to grips with it. Ultimately I think it’s a human tendency to stick with the tried and true, and I certainly can’t rule myself out from that.”

In fairness, NARAS bosses began addressing these problems in the 1990s. Newer, hipper artists received more attention, as did neglected veterans such as Dylan and Springsteen. The Academy’s pool of voters widened considerably while its list of prize categories, originally just 28, expanded to 91 in 1997. It is now well over 100. From championing a very narrow band of pop music, the Grammys now tries to reward almost every conceivable genre. The result is an often surreal mix.

“The whole thing feels a little like an organised crime family that atones for its sins by doing something honourable every so often,” argues Kennedy, “like giving a Grammy to an integral artist like Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins, or T-Bone Burnett. But then it feels like it’s right back to propping up the next person who’s been groomed to sell a lot of CDs.”

All the same, for such a stage-managed event, the Grammys has generated a surprising amount of scandal over the past two decades. Probably the Academy’s biggest fiasco was the awarding of the Best New Artist prize to the German dance-pop duo Milli Vanilli in February 1990. Nine months later, the model-dancers credited as the band’s singers, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, confessed that they had not sung a single note on their multi-platinum album and chart-topping singles.

Red-faced Grammy bosses immediately withdrew the award and Milli Vanilli became a comic footnote to pop history. But farce eventually turned to tragedy when, following a long career slide, Pilatus committed suicide in 1998.

The NARAS chief executive in charge of the Grammys at the time, Michael Greene, survived the Milli Vanilli farrago, but further storms lay ahead. Greene was credited with rebranding the show for a more youthful audience during the 1990s, but he also drew widespread criticism for giving a platform to the controversial lyrics of the rapper Eminem, a three-time winner and performer at the 2001 gala.

“Music has always been the voice of rebellion,” Greene insisted to the audience shortly before Eminem played. “We can’t edit out the art that makes us uncomfortable. That’s what our parents tried to do to Elvis, the Stones and The Beatles… let’s not forget that sometimes it takes tolerance to teach tolerance.”

Soon afterwards, Greene became mired in a personal scandal that resulted in his resignation in April 2002 – but even under new management, the awards ceremony has still attracted unwelcome attention.

Just last year, the 50th anniversary Grammys sparked a war of words between rival divas, young and old. Introducing her duet of the song Proud Mary with Tina Turner, Beyoncé Knowles paid tribute to a long line of classic soul sirens before hailing Turner as “The Queen”. Aretha Franklin was high on the list, and also in attendance to receive an award, but later took exception to Turner stealing her regal title.

“I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyoncé,” Franklin complained in an official press statement following the ceremony. “However I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy. In addition to that, I thank the Grammys and the voting academy for my 20th Grammy and love to Beyoncé anyway.”

But that was not the only catty spat at the 2008 Grammys. Although she only performed at the gala via transatlantic satellite link, the troubled British star Amy Winehouse still managed to cause a stir. After Winehouse won five awards out of six nominations, her fellow singer Natalie Cole slammed her as a bad role model.

“I think she has a great talent, but I don’t agree with the Grammys giving her those nods,” protested Nat King Cole’s daughter, adding that it sent out the wrong message.

Here lies a key dilemma for the Grammys. When the Academy sticks with tried and tested acts it is criticised for ignoring new talent. But when the organisers try to appear cool and current, they risk alienating people with mainstream tastes. The music business, after all, has always been a playground for gigantic egos and wild behaviour. In the car crash between art and commerce, Mozart and Vegas, nobody walks away unscathed.