So in previous Considered Looks, I looked at things that were specifically enshrined, either by popular money-spending opinion or by a single, deeply flawed organizational body. Now I’m going to look at something more incremental – the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
I’ve mentioned it before, but the Grammys are, like most large industry-type awards shows, heavily intertwined with advertising the things they’re awarding. There’s an aspect of the awards that has to do with both shoring up the credibility of the awards themselves and with selling more copies of the albums1, thus making the record label system that also props up the Grammys themselves more prosperous. It’s a sort of symbiosis – the Grammys exist to drive sales, which itself helps the labels and industry-sectors that require those sales to continue doing business go along with the existence of the Grammys.
1 this is why the eligibility period cuts off not at the calendar year, but rather at the beginning of the fall major-release glut – those albums just came out and sold a bunch of copies (in theory) over the holidays, and don’t need the boost of an awards show in February as much as someone whose record came out the previous summer might. This is all fairly-simplified, but also I’ve gone over it a bunch in previous Grammys writeups, so I’m trying not to repeat myself too much.
More specifically, though, the Best New Artist Grammy is more interesting than, say, Artist of the Year because there’s a bit more of a nebulous idea of what it is even meant to represent. It’s a sort of “rookie of the year” award2, which comes with the generalized expectation that not only did this act/band/musician/whatever have a good year, but that they would continue to do so. Since there’s no easy way to predict anything at all in the world of music, and least of all commercial or artistic success, this means that it’s interesting to see who, of all the people that had a good year in any given Grammys eligibility term, managed to have any other good years.
2 although the terms of eligibility have occasionally meant that “new” is a pretty liquid term.
That also, of course, leads one naturally to the oft-repeated notion that the category is cursed. There are, of course, no such things as curses, but it is interesting to see how, even when things were “healthy” for the Record Selling Industry they were unable to sustain the kind of success they were honoring here with any real consistency, and, for the better part of the last couple of decades, the award has shifted from one marking pop success to one that seems to be doing….something else, with some weirdly credibility-focused-seeming choices that seem less predictive and a more a way to get an award to folks with more cult followings that would otherwise not pay attention to the Grammys.
Journey with me into the general morass of the folks that the record selling industry decided were, at one point, promising youngsters, and how correct they might have been! Or not!
Previous Considered Looks can be found here and here (and going backwards from each). Previous parts of this series can be found at the links: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten.
Billie Eilish
WHO IS SHE?: I’m assuming you all remember who Billie Eilish is3, so I will point out that she is the only white person in this section of the list, which is something? Or, in any event, it gives me something to write in this spot.
3 although I will shout out her recent criticism of the “many novelty vinyl editions” craze that also drives me nuts, so way to go B.E.
WHO DID SHE BEAT?: Lizzo, who wasn’t new at the time4, and Rosalía.
4 she made a record with Doomtree’s Lazerbeak who, come to think of it, had a real rough last few years for his (I presume) former collaborators
WAS SHE NEW?: I mean, she was pretty much new to being “alive on earth,” so yes I think it’s fair to say she was new to music
AND…? She seems like a smart and interesting young person, and I still don’t like a note of her music.
IS SHE CURSED?: She’s doing fine.
Megan Thee Stallion
WHO IS SHE?: A rapper who just came out on top in a very entertaining beef with Nicki Minaj. Also, I called her for being the rightful winner in the first place, so I feel very smug about that.
WHO DID SHE BEAT?: Kaytranada! I mean, 99.9% came out in goddamned 2016 and thus could not be further from being new, but she still beat Kaytranada. Also, Phoebe Bridgers, which is somewhat more surprising.
WAS SHE NEW?: Not really
AND…?: She’s always taller than I remember her being.
IS SHE CURSED?: I mean, she fucking well might be. Not career-wise, but you tell me the last couple of years haven’t seemed like Megan Thee Stallion was cursed.
Olivia Rodrigo
WHO IS SHE?: The former star of that one episode of New Girl
WHO DID SHE BEAT? Arooj Aftab, and several nepo candidates.
WAS SHE NEW?: Yep
AND…?: I also decided in favor of O.R. at the time, but like, I still have basically nothing to say here.
IS SHE CURSED?: I mean, we’re so close to the present that in most cases we’re only just getting around to the follow up, so probably not? I mean, I didn’t much care for Guts, but I’m hardly the only person that matters here.
Samara Joy
WHO IS SHE?: A perfectly fine vocal jazz singer
WHO DID SHE BEAT?: Wet Leg, and Molly Tuttle, which is bad enough, but this year it went to a jazz act that wasn’t Domi & JD Beck, and that is bullshit. The Grammys are bullshit, man.
WAS SHE NEW?: Sure
AND…?: It will never be the case that I will think the Grammys made the correct choice when they give to a vocal jazz performer, even though it happens very fucking often.
IS SHE CURSED?: No, but again, this just happened, so who knows?
Victoria Monét
WHO IS SHE?: A veteran songwriter who managed to have a huge hit album last year, a thing that genuinely did seem kind of unlikely.
WHO DID SHE BEAT?: Noah Kahan, which is a shame, and also The War and Treaty, which is even more of a shame.
WAS SHE NEW?: Not really, but it was a nice moment anyway.
AND…?: I like Victoria Monét in general, as far as it all goes.
IS SHE CURSED?: Not in the month and a half since it happened, no.
And so we come to the end of the formal examination. I’ll have the complete findings in a few weeks, along with the rankings, but I think we can decisively say a couple of things right off the bat: 1) curses aren’t real 2) the Grammys have no better idea than anyone else what’s going to seem like an idea tomorrow and 3) this mostly goes to ladies now.
Tune in next time, when we make it official!
Ohio Needs a Train 