Once again, the Recording Academy awarded age over innovation. With former Led Zeppelin front-man Robert Plant and Alison Krauss winning Album of the Year for their duet album Raising Sand, the awards show continues to validate the perception that it is constantly out-of-step with what’s currently happening in popular music.
The win is the latest in a long line of Album of the Year awards that have gone to artists over 55 who released their most remarkable and groundbreaking work decades before. Plant, as a member of the legendary Zeppelin, never won a Grammy during his band’s influential 70s rock-god heyday, as was the case with many of rock and soul’s most influential and celebrated artists. Similarly, classic rock band Santana had never won a Grammy until 1998s Supernatural, albums by iconic 60s singer-songwriter Bob Dylan were largely ignored until he released Time Out of Mind in 1997, and popular jazz/rock fusion band Steely Dan won their first Album of the Year Award in 2000 for Two Against Nature.
Meanwhile, the auteurs of today’s popular music are left to wait for the Awards show’s highest honor. Santana bested popular and influential releases by Jay-Z, OutKast and KoRn in 1998, Steely Dan won over acts like OutKast (again), Eminem and The Strokes. Last year, acclaimed releases by Kanye West and Amy Winehouse were overshadowed by Herbie Hancock’s Album of the Year win for River: The Joni Letters—a covers album by 68-year-old Hancock of songs by 65-year-old Joni Mitchell.
Even when the Album of the Year Award goes to a newer artist, more often than not, it goes to an artist who sounds like an older artist. See Norah Jones’ win in 2003 for her subdued Come Away With Me, or the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack (a set of contemporary country and folk artists covering bluegrass tunes) winning the year before. Of course, there are exceptions; most notably is 1999s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and OutKast’s win in 2003 Speakerboxxx/The Love Below; but if the Grammys are to maintain any semblance of credibility and ‘hipness,’ instead of forcibly awkward onstage collaborations, they should try to pay attention to what’s really happening in music. ~dusty culpepper
