I didn't watch the Grammy Awards, but when I checked my Facebook news feed, I found out many of the people I know did. I had thought the 1990 Milli Vanilli win for Best New Artist -- despite the fact that neither of the two singers from Milli Vanilli actually sang on the album and the Grammy had to be revoked when that was discovered -- cemented the award's irrelevance, but it seems I was wrong.
I also found out that many people equate "I've never heard of this band/performer/musician" with "This band/performer/musician should not have won in this category." I'm pretty sure those statements don't correlate, since most of the time I've never heard of any of the nominees but people who pay more attention to the music biz than I do can figure out which ones they'd prefer win a particular award.
The Grammys strike me as another award show where the more obscure the category, the more likely the win is to be meaningful and potentially accurate as a measure of quality. For example, the "Best Short Form Video" award went to Lady Gaga in a category in which Johnny Cash was also nominated. Videos are, of course, a fairly well-known area of music these days, and the idea that there is an area in which something done by Lady Gaga can be considered superior to something done by Johnny Cash is ludicrous to a degree that the word loses all meaning.
Yes, Cash passed on in 2003, so the video didn't technically come from him, but remember, we are judging between Lady Gaga and Johnny Cash. Even a dork like Justin Timberlake realized he didn't deserve something as ephemeral as an MTV Video Music Award win over Cash back in 2003. A three-minute video of a guitar Johnny Cash may once have played would outrank whatever might be considered Her Ladyship's finest "work."
On the other hand, it probably might have been fun to have been present long enough to watch the likes of Eminem, Cee Lo Green and Jay-Z sit there and take it when country popsters Lady Antebellum walked off with the Record of the Year Award.
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