The Grammys finally gave up on the boomers

Old people aren't welcome at the Pink Pony Club

People seem to like my posts about the Grammys, so I'll share a few thoughts about the 2025 event held Sunday night in Los Angeles.

I’ve been messing around with this one all week, but I got motivated to finish it after I heard this morning that the internet is outraged about the “DEI Grammys.”

To review: I used to be a member of the Recording Academy, but I was one of the voters purged a few years back when new management decided to take a shot at fixing the organization and finally bringing it into the 21st century.

While I fit the demographic of the votes they most needed to purge (white, male, over 40), I almost always gave my votes to the artists and records that generated controversy when they didn’t win. I detailed that story last year in How I got booted as a Grammy voter in case you want the details.

We don’t want music with good taste. We want music that tastes good. (StarKist Tuna commercial cel via Heritage Auctions)

I know that people with good taste are supposed to rag on the Grammys, but things are getting better around there. The best part is that the organization has figured out that trying to appease Boomers and Gen Xers is a terrible plan for the future, so there are a lot of Grammy haters who are still going to hate.

I had a good time, though.

The best news is that the people in charge have given up on their terrible Grammy Moments concept and no longer force young artists to perform alongside the aging artists that CBS executives think their ancient viewers might recognize. We got an evening full of artists sure to agitate anyone who tuned in for their annual visit with Sting or Bonnie Raitt.

As recently as a couple of years ago, CBS would have let the organization pick one from this list: Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Doechii, Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Teddy Swims, Shakira, Raye, and Shaboozey and then probably pressured the producers to bring in Natalie Cole or Carly Simon for a duet.

Instead, we got all of them and most delivered performances that actual music fans under 30 would have appreciated. Chappell Roan proved especially confusing to Southern viewers, since the mythical drag club in her song “The Pink Pony Club” shares a name with a notorious Atlanta strip club and, if you were encountering the song for the first time, the lyrics could be describing a religious mom freaking out over her daughter’s exotic dancing.

I don’t like every single one of the artists who appeared on the show, but it was great to see a broadcast full of performers who are famous to active music buyers instead of a parade of once-huge artists who haven’t enjoyed a hit in at least of couple of decades. If the show was full of artists you’ve never heard before, that’s not because they’re not popular. Either you’ve aged out or you aren’t really a fan of pop music.

Chappell Roan takes a stand

When Roan won Best New Artist (from an impressive group that included artists with actual hit songs and measurable cultural impact), she used her national TV platform to describe her struggles after getting dropped from her first record deal and implored labels to provide health insurance and a livable wage to their developing artists.

Chappell Roan has stood up for artist’s rights from the moment she started getting attention, and she correctly called out labels for their arms-length attitude towards the mental and physical health of the artists who drive their success.

Unfortunately, there’s a bigger villain here. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) has never attempted to do any serious collective bargaining with the label industry, probably because the union itself has an ugly history of hostility towards recording artists.

Back in the early days, the AFM went to war against recorded music in the misguided belief that records would steal the jobs of live musicians. This led to an ill-fated strike that did even more damage than the earlier strike that was supposed to stop the talkies from putting the musicians who performed in silent movie houses out of work.

This is a complicated story that hasn’t been properly told, but I’d sign up to watch a 10-hour HBO series that starred Leonardo Di Caprio as AFM president James Caesar Petrillo and his crusade against recorded music.

Before my local union rep jumps into the comments, I do understand that the AFM has a health insurance plan for its members, but it’s a plan designed to reward gigging and session musicians. In my experience with the union, there was always a sense that rock bands and rappers weren’t “real” musicians and that the union would be better off if we all gave up and turned the work back over to clarinet players.

Anyway, the AFM negotiates contracts with labels for session music fees. That’s the organization that could force the majors to offer health care plans to artists. Historically, the union never wanted to hear from artist managers, accountants, or attorneys, so the only way to influence its agenda was to go to meetings and make union culture a central part of your life.

If anyone wants to get serious about creating this kind of opportunity for recording artists, all the players would have to put aside the traditional rules of engagement between labels and managers and artists and come together to figure out a new way of working together. It’s too bad this didn’t happen back when a significant percentage of music companies were controlled by the people who founded them, because those guys were a lot easier to deal with than an executive class terrified of shareholder blowback if they take their eyes off the prize.

I wouldn’t expect Chappell Roan to know much about the finer points of contract and labor law, and anyone who tries to dismiss her message based on the facts of the situation is ignoring an important point. Creative people put trust in the music companies that profit from their work, and music artists don’t have the kind of collective bargaining that has delivered benefits to actors.

Don’t pick the wrong fight

Kendrick Lamar won both Record of the Year and Song of the Year with “Not Like Us,” a track that was the knockout blow in Kendrick’s rap feud with Drake.

If you don’t know about the feud, read this explainer from the New York Post. To be fair, if you don’t already know about the feud, I’m not sure this article or anything else online would fill in the blanks for anyone who doesn’t engage with hip hop culture.

The shortest version: Drake imagines himself to be a far better MC than he actually is, at least by the standards of the first-generation rappers who came up in the ’80s and ’90s. Kendrick Lamar is the one contemporary artist that the old guys respect.

Drake picked a fight because he wasn’t mentioned in a conversation (a/k/a series of answer tracks) that had nothing to do with the kind of easy listening pop records he makes. He came for Kendrick in his own answer track, and Kendrick eviscerated him in a serious of records that peaked with “Not Like Us.”

Drake’s public humiliation was real last year, but I don’t think anyone thought a diss track was going to hang around and have any impact at the Grammys. The fact that “Not Like Us,” a song specifically about what a whiner Drake is, won the two big prizes on Grammy night is a strong collective referendum on Drake by his peers.

Ouch.

It’s no Lemonade, but it’s pretty good

Cowboy Carter finally won an Album of the Year Grammy for Beyoncé. This verges on too little, too late. It’s her fifth album of the year nomination and she could have won in any of the previous years she was up for the award. Compare and contrast with her other Album of the Year nominations:

• 2010 I Am Sasha Fierce (lost to Taylor Swift Fearless)

• 2015 Beyoncé (lost to Beck Morning Phase)

• 2017 Lemonade (lost to Adele 25)

• 2023 Renaissance (lost to Harry Styles Harry’s House)

I can’t really believe that neither Beyoncé nor Lemonade won. Morning Phase is a particularly good Beck LP, but Beyoncé was a massive cultural moment, the peak achievement in a year that Beyoncé should have been crowned as the queen she is. 25 is no 21, and Lemonade was one of those records that managed to push the limits of the form while still being incredibly popular. I voted for Lemonade that year and I still can’t fathom what everyone else was thinking.

Today I heard that blonde ladies who used to be on television but now play TV stars on YouTube are complaining that Album of the Year didn’t go to another blonde lady like Taylor or Sabrina Carpenter. Let’s be fair: The Tortured Poets Society is not Taylor Swift’s best work. The songs have held up well over the past few months, but it’s probably time for her to shake up the production team and get some fresh ideas into what’s becoming a claustrophobic recording process. I have no objections to Sabrina Carpenter, but her album featured some strong singles and some filler. It’s a pop record, not the kind of ambitious creative statement that Cowboy Carter is.

This is the first time that I can remember that my votes (before, during, and after my actual voting era) would match the actual winners. It’s a weird feeling.

Don’t sell yourself too cheap

I was momentarily heartened when I thought Grammy head honcho Harvey Mason Jr. was appearing on the CBS broadcast to a heartfelt apology for past organizational screwups. Unfortunately, it became apparent that he was actually doing a victory dance before introducing The Weeknd, who was returning to the Grammy Awards less than five years after swearing off them forever. “We’re good now, right?”

Look, we all know that Abel is attempting a very ambitious stadium tour this summer and needs as big a launch as possible for his new album. The traditional math says a network television appearance is essential for getting the word to casual fans.

And yet, the 2021 Grammy screwup may have been the most shocking incident in a long series of embarrassing moments over the decades. Not only did “Blinding Lights” fail to win Song of the Year and/or Record of the Year, it wasn’t even nominated.

Maybe everyone in the Weeknd’s camp was delighted by the exposure and happy to have the Grammy feud behind him, but I though Mason sounded like Roger Goodell at his Super Bowl press conference explaining why everyone eventually bends a knee to the power of the NFL.

Abel was doing the Grammys a favor by forgiving them. Maybe they could show him a bit more respect.

Still, it was a excellent show

There are some problems. Either Trevor Noah should be allowed to bring his own writers or the organization should recruit a different host, someone who’s more comfortable mouthing the branding mantras that consultants have sold to the Recording Academy. Noah’s really antsy whenever he’s asked to sincerely deliver the kind of buzzspeak that he skewered on The Daily Show.

The Grammys asked engineer and mixer Bob Clearmountain (who’s somehow only been recognized twice by the organization) to hand out some trophies at the daytime ceremony, and Bob spoke with grace about his own losses in the recent fires. You can go to ~2:18:20 in the 4-hour YouTube video of the Premiere Ceremony to watch him speak.

Sierra Ferrell was living her best life at the Grammys (YouTube screenshot).

Extra points to Sierra Ferrell who swept the Americana category and showed up to the daytime awards in a full ’90s manga Lolita Goth ensemble that pissed all over the “authenticity” that Roots Police try to enforce in their country music backwater. She may not have made it to CBS, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to miss her moment on the red carpet. It’s a great moment for a genre that could use more trailer parks and less private school. You can watch her domination at ~41:42 in that same YouTube video of the Premiere Ceremony.

(Note to my progressive friends: Sierra actually grew up in a trailer park. That was not some private school metaphor for a lifestyle different than your own.)

I haven’t looked at Facebook to find out how pissed off the old people are, but here’s hoping they’re raging at “being forced” to watch a bunch of stupid kids they don’t understand.

After decades of rot, the Grammys are finally being run by people who’ve accepted that fact that boomers are starting to die off. Music culture won’t survive if the people who run the business still want to appeal to the same people they’ve been trying to entertain for the past six decades.

Today’s music fans saw Sean Ono Lennon on the broadcast and thought he was some crusty old man who might have been in the Beatles. Then he made them cringe the he tried to suck up to them with a (rather excellent) Drake diss. It’s been 62 years since the Beatles had their first hit. Go back 62 years before that hit and you’ll realize that electrical recording hadn’t even been invented yet. Music culture has been plowing the same dusty furrow long after it stopped produced viable crops.

It was weird and kind of thrilling to see Charli XCX on TV. It’s still confusing to me that an artist with such deep roots in underground dance culture was allowed to be a pop star in 2024. Back in the ’90s, I thought records like hers were going to be a big part of the alternative future, but that wave never happened here in the U.S. It’s nice to finally see a record like Brat happen (even if it’s a couple decades late).

The rock and alternative categories continue to black holes best not mentioned in polite company. The Grammys have never gotten those genres right and, now that there’s no real mainstream rock culture to guide them, Grammy voters are totally baffled at both the nominating and final voting stages. The Beatles? The Rolling Stones?

8-track of the day

Every once in a while, the Album of the Year Grammy goes to a record that people will care about 50 years later.