Maybe you’re tired of hearing about the Grammys already, but this is what you’re getting this week, so you better like it. And what an apt motto for Grammys 2023: it’s what we’re stuck with. There are other measures of success for an album, but for some reason, a historically out-of-touch panel is supposed to determine the best music of the year. They certainly succeeded in drawing big names with cutthroat fans; the main nominees this year were Beyoncé, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, and Lizzo. The show highlighted superfans of each artist nominated for Album of the Year, yet somehow, at the end of the night, many were left disappointed.
The four most coveted categories of the Grammys are Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. While the criteria for winning a Grammy isn’t explicitly clear, artists with an impact on the music scene are heavy contenders. It’s very clearly not audience choice, and as such politics, artist status, and optics play a role. With so many heavy hitters, it’s my opinion that the awards were distributed in an attempt to appease everyone, which of course resulted in no one being very satisfied.
The biggest upset may have been Song of the Year, which went to Bonnie Raitt, the only nominee in the category to be a solo songwriter. While merit can be argued, the point is mainly that it was surprising considering the other nominees: Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Harry Styles, Adele, Kendrick Lamar, and more were all infinitely more likely picks, though more controversial. Why pit the favorites against each other when there is a clear underdog? The monthly Spotify statistics give more of an indication of how much of an upset this was: the ten nominees for this category have a combined total of 384.3 million monthly listeners, and Raitt’s 3.2 million makes up less than 1% of this. The category is far from a popularity contest, but choosing the least-known artist is less interesting for the viewer, and the average viewer is unlikely to have even listened to the Song of the Year.
The aforementioned artists got their flowers in other, less prestigious categories, with the exception of Lizzo and Harry Styles taking home Record of the Year and Album of the Year respectively. RENAISSANCE won Best Dance/Electronic Music album, giving Beyoncé her 32nd Grammy — the most a single artist has held. Though this moment was historic; she was the category’s clear favorite, eliminating some suspense. The Academy needs to give a reason for music’s biggest names to attend, throwing them softball categories they are likely to win, otherwise, they may not attend at all, like Taylor Swift being absent last year despite a nomination for Album of the Year.
More so than the integrity of the award, the program exists to make money, and these nominees and winners felt strategic in a way to maximize viewership. Pre-pandemic, the viewership was never below 17 million average viewers but has since dropped off steeply. This year was the first since 2020 to break 10 million, with 2021 being the lowest-ever viewership at 9.227 million viewers. This year showed a viewership increase of 30.8% from the last, at 12.545 million viewers, so I suppose the strategy worked, yet the interests of the judges’ panel and the viewer are disconnected. As Styles said in his acceptance speech, “there is no such thing as ‘best’ in music,” and even if there was, we wouldn’t be looking to the Grammys to tell us.
