So here we are again! It’s that time of year, it’s GRAMMY TIME. This year we’re headed to New York for Music’s Biggest Night, and this year we couldn’t be more excited because this year we have a dog in the fight, that’s right: this year we got to peruse the list of nominees and VOTE! Yup, we got a new fancy status as a voting member and we exercised our power.
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| Boy howdy, did we ever. |
Record of the Year:
This is a production award, which made this category a bit of a runaway. We hand this honor to “Despacito.” Hey, we have no idea what he’s singing about, but we figure any producer deserves a Grammy if they can make Justin Bieber sound 1. Like he’s bilingual, 2. Good.
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| ...or 3. "Un hombre afortunado para estar con Selena Gomez" |
There’s a soft spot for this one, and it belongs to “Awaken My Love” by Childish Gambino. You can’t beat the creativity on this project, from beginning to end it will captivate you.
Song of the Year:
This is a songwriting award, remember- we’re giving this to “Issues” because, well, we like pizzicato. (Yes, we know that probably wasn’t “written” but we’re going with it anyway.)
Best New Artist:
And since we’re there, we’re going to go ahead and give this one to Julia Michaels too. Truth: Julia wins our vote because we did some random sampling of all of the submissions. Out of 25 chosen samples, hers was the only collection that never landed on lyrics that included the N word. Just trying to keep it classy over here at BentBeat…you’re welcome.
Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media:
Oo! Oo! Speaking of “you’re welcome,” we strongly and emphatically put “Moana” in this winner’s spot. (We’ll go on record as saying we don’t think it will win.) Here’s why: this is a tight race between “Moana” and “La La Land.” We give “Moana” our vote because while “La La Land” has some good music, it’s basically just a recording of a Broadway musical. We give full credit to the engineers and performers for the necessary manipulations to make that a good album. However, the Moana vocalists were sought out for purposes of authenticity (Opetaia Foa'i, Jermaine Clements) and talent (maybe we concede the exception of The Rock here), and the resulting recordings are, frankly, quite good.
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| "Hey... wait... Well, actually you make a fine point." |
Here’s where we’ll give “La La Land” it’s due and vote for “Another Day of Sun.” Although the irony of being able to award Seth MacFarlane a Grammy for “I Like Myself” was not lost on us, we decided to go with the deserved winner here and not the punch line.
Pop Vocal Album:
“Evolve” from Imagine Dragons wins our vote. See the note above regarding creativity in the Childish Gambino section. Oh, hey, Grammy coordinators: can we officially request a duet here? We’re drooling at the possibility.
Pop Duo/Group:
Here’s some PDX hometown love: we give our vote to Portugal. The Man and “Feel It Still.” It’s fun, guys.
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| Pictured here after losing a bet with a promoter |
We love Zac Brown. Have we ever mentioned that we love Zac Brown? Zac can have this one for “My Old Man.”
Country Song:
We give this one to “Drinking Problem” by Midland. Anyone who can write an entire song based on a pun (and make it work) deserves an award.
Country Album:
“From a Room, Volume 1” by Chris Stapleton. Let’s be honest. With all of the country crossover happening today, don’t we really all just want to listen to this? A bunch of amazing dudes sitting in a studio for a jam? This was so refreshing and wonderful to listen to.
Country Solo:
Speaking of country crossover, Miranda Lambert gets this one for “Tin Man” purely for clinging to her country roots and making a brilliant song out of them. Thanks for keeping the country in country music, Miranda.
Rock Performance:
We don’t have a lot of words to say about this except that there was NO WAY ON EARTH that this vote wasn’t going to “The Promise” by Chris Cornell. We’re not crying, you’re crying.
And, while we’re busy not crying, we’ll just slide in our vote for Ke$ha and “Praying” here. Okay, this vote isn’t a slide, it’s probably our most vehement vote of the whole bunch. There’s a lot to say about this particular recording, but maybe another time and another place. Excuse me while I go out and get some waterproof mascara.
Video of the Year:
We gotta end this on a more chipper note. Our extremely emphatic vote goes to “Makeba” by Jain. If you haven’t seen this video yet, stop reading this long-winded post and go watch it. Right now. In fact, you can find it here:
And that’s our votes! Sure we voted in more categories, but those are the ones we feel strongest about. What do you think? Did we pick the right winners? Do we need a drinking game for the ones we got right/wrong? We’re open to suggestions of course.
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| The chaos awaits |
We’ll see you there!
The BentBeat Team
bentbeat.com
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