A Considered Look at the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees

You guys get it by now. Every year the RRHOF makes public their nominations, every year I reject most of them because the RRHOF (as an institution) has rocks in their head instead of Rock, and every year we fail to shore up even this one tiny corner of the civilization.

Truly, everything gets worse every day. Let’s see who belongs in this museum. 

Mary J. Blige
MJB was nominated a few years ago, at which point my opinion was that while she’s an undeniably great singer who (very) occasionally lends her considerable talents to good music, that, in fact, almost never actually happens. She’s got the hits to make it in, but I’m not entirely certain that even a hall of fame that has seemingly no idea where it’s going has space for her.

THE VERDICT: No

Mariah Carey
An unspeakably gorgeous pop singer with an otherworldly voice who was brought to fame by her predatory husband, whom she escaped to establish herself as the force behind her own music, along the way figuring out how to make movies both good (Precious, Lego Batman) and bad (Glitter, The Bachelor). Her music is unlistenable, has absolutely nothing to do with rock and roll, and I cannot in good conscience give this one a pass.

THE VERDICT: No

Cher
An unspeakably gorgeous pop singer with an otherworldly voice who was brought to fame by her predatory husband, whom she escaped to establish herself as the force behind her own music, along the way figuring out how to make movies both good (Moonstruck, Mermaids) and bad (Burlesque, Faithful). Her music is somewhat better than Mariah Carey’s, and has the tiniest bit to do with rock and roll, but I still cannot in good conscience give this one a pass.

THE VERDICT: No

Dave Matthews Band
Last time they were nominated, I referred to them as something like “The radio flotsam of my youth,” and I feel like that’s not quite right. Flotsam is something that falls off a boat when it wrecks, jetsam is stuff that’s intentionally thrown off the boat. Since I discarded the music of the Dave Matthews band by choice, it’s the radio jetsam of my youth.

THE VERDICT: No

Eric B & Rakim
It’s been twelve years since their first nomination. That’s unusual enough that it makes me wonder if it’s a record. Anyway, they were an important link in the chain, they were undeniably influential in moving rap music forward, and they had an abnormally high quality control sense. 

THE VERDICT: Yes

Foreigner
Mark Ronson wants you to say yes, guys. He wants it so bad.

THE VERDICT: Mark Ronson is, unfortunately, wrong. That’s gonna be a hard no. 

Peter Frampton
He came alive in the seventies, and thus created a world-class opportunity for a mid-dj-shift toilet/cigarette break. This is why radio DJs liked him, and thus, why they played his songs, and thus, why he was popular. There will never – and I mean this – ever be a shred of evidence that will persuade me that there is any other reason for his fame. His music is very, very bad, guys. Was he good on The Simpsons? Of course he was. But this isn’t the Simpsons guest-actor hall of fame, and one live album that people liked fifty years ago doesn’t cut it. 

THE VERDICT: No

Jane’s Addiction
Would it surprise the audience to know that I basically like Jane’s Addiction? I mean, it’s graded on a curve, but that first record has some real good stuff on it. Perry Farrell is a ridiculous person, and his greed is a real liability, but, you know, the world is more or less better with Jane’s Addiction than it would be otherwise, even if only a miniscule amount. I’m not sure that leaves them eligible for the hall of fame, but in this group, one and a half great albums is kind of the best we can do. 

THE VERDICT: If we’re pretending these verdicts would actually correlate to actual induction, they would get in because you have to let in somebody. But otherwise, no, not really. Nothing’s Shocking really is very good, though. 

Kool & the Gang
They had hits, people like them, they were around forever. If I have very little opinion about them as such, it’s mostly down to personal taste. I can’t think of a reason they wouldn’t go in there, but I’m not sure that I have a lot of feelings on that matter, either. I guess I feel like the reason to keep them out is that they don’t deserve to get in before the Meters (or the Neville Brothers, for that matter), but that seems petty – they don’t need to be in direct competition, baby!

THE VERDICT: Sure

Lenny Kravitz
Boy, Lenny Kravitz sure seems to have been extra-present for the last several months. He’s shown up at things, he was just declared an icon by the people of E!, there’s just been kind of a lot of Kravitz-chatter going on. I assume this is either a part of that or the goal of that, but like, his best work is a cut-rate Prince impression¹, and honestly, I cannot think of a thing he has added to the genre. I say this as someone who even kind of likes some of it sometimes: this is not hall of fame worthy stuff. 

THE VERDICT: No. 

¹ his biggest hit is, admittedly, him doing an impression of Prince doing an impression of Jimi Hendrix

Oasis
So, me and Little Steven are the only people on Earth that agree that there should be a part of the Hall of Fame set aside for singles. It solves problems like this². It would really suit a band like Oasis, that have two basically-inarguable classics of the genre (“Wonderwall” and “Live Forever”) that would put them in twice³. As it is, they’ve got some truly great moments in the singles of their first couple of records, and largely exist beyond that as an answer to the question “what if Ray and Dave were actually Mick and Keith?”, and really, nobody needed that answer. 

THE VERDICT: No, but really: the best parts of their early albums are fucking great. 

² or, for that matter, Peter Frampton (“Show Me the Way”), The MC5 (“Kick Out the Jams”), or, like, The Guess Who (who have never actually been nominated at all!) and also actual inductees like Deep Purple (“Smoke on the Water”), The O’Jays (“Love Train”) and Bill Haley and his Comets.
³ with arguments available for “Rock and Roll Star” and “Champagne Supernova”

Sinead O’Connor
It’s almost certainly going to happen, and it’ll be infuriating to watch the remnants of the old-style music industry celebrate the inclusion of someone they did everything they could to drum out, but, you know, that’s how the world goes. Maybe somebody will at least do “Black Boys on Mopeds.” 

THE VERDICT: Yes

Ozzy Osbourne
At this point I’ve gone over and over my opinion of Ozzy’s music, I don’t really need to do it again, and also, it’s beside the point. I usually discard the non-musical considerations here, although they do intrude here and there, so let me state for the record that I believe that Ozzy Osbourne, if no one else⁴ should be permitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for being him. He had more than a regular life’s share of being awful to people, and seems to have done whatever he can to be different from that, all while being a pretty staunchly positive and uplifting member of the, oh, music world in general. If he’s also a ridiculous and silly weirdo who does dumb shit for money, well, that also happens in rock and roll more than I’d like, and I’m not going to lay the problem for it at his feet. 

THE VERDICT: Yes

⁴ Iggy Pop would, but he has lots of great music, and so doesn’t need the consideration

Sade
Oh, sure, why would we bother with an unimpeachable discography that doesn’t has fewer bad songs than I have fingers on a hand? Why bother with a band⁵ that consistently delivers the goods every time? Of course it isn’t rock and roll, but that argument was ended years ago in favor of GODDAMMIT INDUCT SADE INTO THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME.

THE VERDICT: Yes

⁵ The band. They’re still named after their singer, but Sade is the name of the band. 

A Tribe Called Quest
Last year I wrote a whole thing that ended with “of course they belong in the hall of fame you dinguses”. It was not dissimilar to the thing about Sade above, in fact. Now, I like ATCQ less than Sade, but also the rest of the world doesn’t, and their influence is practically incalculable, plus they had hits. Open and shut. Easiest decision they’ll make all year. 

THE VERDICT: Yes, obviously. 

2024 People’s Choice Awards

The People, as they say, have chosen. For the seventh¹ year in a row, E! has chosen a ghastly number of contestants in an unforgivable number of categories, and some subset of the people, certainly, have chosen. 

¹ time’s arrow moves only forward

It is, however, back in its ancestral slot, the heart of awards season. E! decided to move it into the awards no-man’s land of November. It somehow picked up ratings from 2021 to 2022, so E! did what any sensible cable overlord did: they didn’t have the ceremony at all in 2023 and here it is in 2024, where it was before².

² albeit at the later-end of the bell curve – it’s traditionally a month or so earlier. 

If this seems wishy washy, allow me to propose that it is, in fact, something fairly mundane: E! lives heavily on its red carpet coverage, or at least it wants the viewing audience to believe it does. That coverage, however, is content that’s better handled by other media, and often, in fact, is. That said, there is some value to being the last game in town, and it’s possible that E! is building toward this. To that end, they have hired Laverne Cox to, well, let’s say gamely, host the proceedings every year³. It would seem to me that would require some sort of contract, and that it might be advantageous to everyone involved that the contract period (which probably – again, I’m making this up entirely, but it’s an educated guess – requires the People’s Choice Awards, otherwise what are they even doing) include this awards, and thus wouldn’t it be easier to cover some more of these if they were all in one vicinity^?. 

³ she is worlds better than the last several people to have the job. 

Oh, and also red carpet interviews are stupid, and if they ever mattered, they sure don’t matter much now, and thus there are, simply, fewer people in the pool for them, and clumping them all together helps the odds that they’ll get the widest set of people while they’re, say, already in town for the Emmys or whatever. 

They’re mostly sticking with the winning formula aside from the change. We’re up from an eye-watering forty categories to an eye-firehosing forty-five⁴. Surprisingly some of those new categories are country categories, which I would have thought they would have covered when they devoted a whole entire nother awards show to it back last fall. Wonders never cease. 

⁴ in years past, they’ve gone as high as 44, and that’s only within my time writing headnotes for these writeups, so if 45 is a record then it’s not by much. 

Anyway, Adam Sandler will be declared the Icon of the People and Lenny Kravitz will be declared the Icon of the Music. That’ll be nice. 

The Athlete of the Year
You know, what? As I write this, the Chiefs just won the Super Bowl, which made a bunch of the worst people much angrier than they should have been (UPDATE: angry, in fact, enough to murder, because stochastic terrorism is just how we live now) about what officially seems to be a pathological need to demand that everything is the result of a conspiracy⁵. It’s been glorious, and while there are several other people on this list that have also managed to make it through my general disdain for professional athletes into the realm of the rightful, the only one who’s currently made terrible people apoplectic merely by being good at a game and having a famous girlfriend is the one to give a trophy for. And he’s from a mere stone’s throw⁶ away from where I sometimes write these very writeups! That said, it literally takes all of that for me to even think about a football player in the first place, so let’s not go expecting it to happen ever again. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Travis Kelce

⁵ as with many classic examples of this phenomenon, the field of thinking that NFL is, shall we say, a little more willing to lean on the scale than other sports leagues has been crowded by the dipshits who don’t see the difference between opportunism and an active conspiracy. God, football fans are exhausting. 
⁶ I mean, he’d probably have to throw it. I don’t have much of an arm and it’s actually kinda far

The Comedy Act of the Year
It really does seem like John Mulaney can’t miss, doesn’t it?

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: John Mulaney, Baby J

The Social Celebrity of the Year
Megan Thee Stallion just absolutely won a rap beef primarily abetted by social media in the first place⁷, and even though I’m pretty sure the whole thing happened between the nominations closing and now, and thus couldn’t have been a factor, it’s going to be her. Previously it was Selena Gomez for being generally delightful and for pissing everyone off by dating Benny Blanco, both of which are fundamentally good things that I approve of.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Selena Gomez

⁷ although really, it was mostly just “HISS”, but you know, it’s the People’s Choice Awards. Gotta start somewhere

The Concert Tour of the Year
Look, good, bad, whatever, Taylor Swift’s tour was not only a significant factor in the economic well-being of several of the cities she went to, and she managed to do all that without majorly disappointing anyone beyond the individual level⁸, and that’s impressive enough that I’m happy to call the race and move on to thinking about something else. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour

⁸ I assume there are, somewhere, people who dragged themselves through the entire ordeal of seeing Taylor Swift in 2023 and didn’t have a good time, if only numerically (and because, obviously, I cannot myself imagine this as an experience worth having), but I’ve not heard anything from any of them. 

The R&B Artist of the Year
OK so, Usher is nominated here⁹, but spent the last week of the first month of the year mounting a Super Bowl performance and an album that are both so good it’s tempting to call it a “comeback” even though he did not, in fact, go anywhere. That did not happen. So, we have two scenarios again, and, as I did in the intro, I’ll start with the more charitable to the PCAs here: did they know all this was going to happen and correctly predict that the last couple of weeks of Usher fandom were going to be a damn party? Or did they just grab-ass their way into it? Is this a favor they’re doing me, personally, by letting me talk about Usher for awhile? The world may never know!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: I mean, it really shouldn’t be Usher, given that we’re talking about 2023 here, so maybe he can like, accept the award with SZA or something. 

⁹ and I genuinely don’t know why

The Hip-Hop Artist of the Year

I like pretty much everything about Post Malone except for his rapping, but this is the people’s choice awards, and there’s a billion of these things to get through, so that’s good enough for me, dammit. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Post Malone

The Pop Artist of the Year
Similarly, I want to use this space, the Peoples Choice Award for Pop Artist of the Year, as covered by ohioneedsatraindotcom, to say that I think Dua Lipa tried a bunch of stuff, and really only the Barbie song worked, but that she should have any award anyway.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Dua Lipa

The Collaboration Song of the Year
No points for guessing that it’s “I Remember Everything.”

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Zach Bryan & Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything”

The New Artist of the Year
Noah Kahan is from Vermont! Vermont! Wonders never cease. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Noah Kahan

The Female Latin Artist of the Year
A particular favorite occurrence of mine is when someone who clearly does have a vision and a clear purpose in her art also presents herself in such a way that she is indistinguishable from other pop stars. I think it’s neat! As such, this will probably go to Rosalía for the entire foreseeable future, given that the circumstances only arise every several years.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Rosalía

The Male Latin Artist of the Year
Peso Pluma’s career has, thus far, led to me actually finding about out corridos and all that, and that’s something. Learning things is fun!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Peso Pluma

The Female Country Artist of the Year
You know, I wrote above about how they made a whole new Country Music award s show, and I briefly thought that it would be interesting if they made an attempt to cross the weird country divide¹⁰ but, of course, they have not. I mean, in this case I assume it’s my fault for believing the world could be interesting instead of just repetitive.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Oh god it’s Lainey Wilson, isn’t it? Damn. 

¹⁰ the one where Kacey Musgraves and Zach Bryan have a #1 hit despite no support for country radio or, like, anything that’s ever happened to Kacey Musgraves, but also Tyler Childers and (probably, although it remains to be seen) Noah Kahan. That sort of thing. The primary unaddressed symptom of the brain disorder that has been dragging country radio into the muck for, oh, several decades now. 

The Male Country Artist of the Year
Oh hey look, Zach Bryan! Well, maybe it’ll be different after all¹¹.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Zach Bryan

¹¹ It will not. . 

The Album of the Year
Guys, I had to listen to so much of so many of these albums because I hadn’t done so before and wanted to be fair and now I’m even sadder than I was before. And I was pretty sad before!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS

The Song of the Year
To be clear, the (terrible) Gunna song here nominated is called “FukUMean”. I suppose it will be fun to see what the song is called on television¹². That’s all I got here.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Luke Combs, “Fast Car”

¹² I suppose I could go watch the video, but we all know I’m not going to do that. 

The Group/Duo of the Year
This is the first category in which I would like a complete do-over, but it sure isn’t the last. Fun!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Grupo Frontera

The Female Artist of the Year
I’m hardly the first to point it all out, but gosh almighty look how much more famous the people in this category are than the ones in the male artist category. No reason.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Taylor Swift

The Male Artist of the Year
I’m not sure that I agree that The Weeknd, who didn’t do much in 2023, earned this as such, but like, he’s still the best one here, so he wins it by default.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Weeknd

The Host of the Year
Here’s to Padma Lakshmi, for doing a job so well we all kind of forgot someone had to do it. Feeling good about Kristen Kish, tho. I’ll probably let you know how it turned out when I write about this next year, because it’s not like Top Chef isn’t still going to be the only one of these shows I actively watch. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Padma Lakshmi

The Nighttime Talk Show of the Year
I suppose it’s a shame that this all happened right before Jon Stewart came back to The Daily Show, but that just means this will be equally easy next year. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Daily Show, even though that probably means that I disagree with Roy Wood Jr., which is a bummer. 

The Daytime Talk Show of the Year
It remains the case that only one of these shows features its delightful host doing what it does best, and so even if only for Kellyoke, The Kelly Clarkson Show gets this one.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Kelly Clarkson Show

The Competition Contestant of the Year
How is someone here for fucking That’s My Jam and Buddha Lo isn’t here for winning Top Chef two season in a row? It’s a travesty! I mean, I liked Keke Palmer as much as anyone else, but I would also like to question whether the “competition” includes “Jimmy Fallon’s drunken primetime singalong hour here, but I guess I can’t think of a reason why it would be disqualified on technical grounds.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Given all that, I guess it has to be Anetra, from RuPaul’s Drag Race

The Reality TV Star of the Year
Do you suppose at any point in the last fifteen years Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino has ever moved to try to have his nickname not be a part of every listing he’s a part of? Follow-up question: when do you suppose is the last time anyone actually called him “The Situation” instead of just Mike? 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kandi Burruss, The Real Housewives of Atlanta

The TV Performance of the Year
This is, genuinely, the weirdest fucking grab-bag of “we want to give awards for these things but they don’t fit our other categories.” We’ve got leads, guest appearances, comedies, dramas, the whole ball. Is this because it was the only way to get Billie Eilish in there, and, therefore, to be able to have her name appear in the SEO for the thing? The world may never know. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ayo Edebiri, The Bear

The Drama TV Star of the Year
There are, and this is not a joke, two people here nominated for Law & Order: SVU, a show on which the two actors in question have been playing their characters for, respectively, seventeen squillion years. El oh el.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Pedro Pascal, The Last of Us

The Comedy TV Star of the Year
I feel like this awards season is primarily marked by my defense of Ted Lasso season 3. It will continue to be so, so there.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso

The Female TV Star of the Year
And here, too. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso

The Male TV Star of the Year
I want to point out that it is at least a little funny for someone to earn a male tv star award for a character who literally gives birth to a universe, but I’m not sure that it is, and, frankly, I think it’s best if we all moved on. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Tom Hiddleston, Loki

The Bingeworthy Show of the Year
In which we celebrate gavage, and our willingness to line up for it. It’s first-person plural, folks. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: I’m glad Jury Duty was such an exciting little thing, otherwise I’d have to make a real uncomfortable confession about Love is Blind. 

The Competition Show of the Year
At least the Emmys still pretend Top Chef is still cool, goddammit. This is nonsense, and I cannot abide it.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Squid Game: The Challenge

The Reality Show of the Year
Nothing I do every year makes me feel like a cranky old man stereotype with nearly the efficacy of this fucking category. Burn it all down.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Below Decks both has boats and makes me think about the similarly-titled Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks, so that’s two things it’s got going for it, which makes it the winner. 

The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show of the Year
Boy, a lot of this was a bit of a letdown, huh? Rough all over. We need another season of Andor, stat!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Loki, and absolutely definitely not Secret Invasion

The Drama Show of the Year
Man, there is something truly, existentially funny about having to ask oneself “which is the more quality television presentation, the godawful Succession or the deeply trashy Chicago Fire?” What a world.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Last of Us

The Comedy Show of the Year
You know, it seems this year that I’ve seen a lot more longtime tv-type folks wring their hands about how the golden age is over and all that, and I feel like that might be true. Some of this, of course, is because it’s the People’s Choice Awards, which traditionally has a nomination pool that’s pretty heavy on the parts of television I don’t like, but this is genuinely as dire as the comedy show category has been in a long time, so maybe there’s something to it.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ted Lasso. I liked the third season, dammit. Mostly. Well, I liked the comedy parts, which is why it wins, anyway. See below. 

The Show of the Year
It’s The Bear, which almost never actually functions as a comedy anyway, and so is the best show, but not the best comedy. Welcome to Torturedlogicville, population: me. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Bear

The Movie Performance of the Year
I cannot explain what set of circumstances make me wildly happy for Danielle Brooks for getting so much attention for The Color Purple, but I’m wildly happy about it, and I don’t mind saying it.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple

The Drama Movie Star of the Year
Is The Color Purple somehow not still a drama? What the fuck? Oh also, Jacob Elordi is in this category for Priscilla, and the other category for Saltburn. That seems fine I guess. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon

The Comedy Movie Star of the Year
You know, I’m more or less positively disposed to all of these people in general. Most of them did terrible work here. I want so badly to someday give Glen “Chad Radwell” Powell a trophy. This is not that occasion. It’s a real bummer.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Margot Robbie, Barbie

The Action Movie Star of the Year
Jason Momoa is here for the wrong movie. Whatever charms Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom may have held, the job he does in Fast X is world-class, and deserves awards. He’s definitely the “Star” in the unofficial sense that he’s the reason to watch the damn movie, so we’ll all just assume this is a typo and the world does, in fact, make sense.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jason Momoa, Fast X (even though the website plainly says Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom)

The Female Movie Star of the Year
Yep we’ve got all the genders covered here. Male, female, action, comedy, drama. All of ‘em. Anyway, I came late to Barbie, largely wasn’t as impressed by it as other people seem to have been¹³, but absolutely none of that is Margot Robbie’s fault, as usual.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Margot Robbie, Barbie

¹³ some of the reasons for this are things I’m very aware of, a couple of them were reasons I was not aware of but have since come to understand, and the rest of it remains an utter bafflement to me.

The Male Movie Star of the Year
It’s hard not to feel bad for Michael B. Jordan, who directed a movie with Jonathan Majors in it during a year when that turned out to be a bad thing to have done. It’s also worth noting that Timothee Chalamet appears to have delivered a performance that everyone wanted to hate, and then saw and didn’t hate. That’s also pretty impressive. But Ryan Gosling was just Ken! 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ryan Gosling, Barbie

The Drama Movie of the Year
You know, a thing that I love about dividing every movie into “Drama, Action or Comedy”¹⁴ is that you get to consider whether you think M3gan is a better movie than Killers of the Flower Moon because neither of them is Action or Comedy. That’s pretty great.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: M3gan, because it’s much shorter

¹⁴ there is a category for sci-fi/fantasy television, but not for movies

The Comedy Movie of the Year
If you can find me one person who saw more than one comedy last year whose favorite comedy was 80 For Brady, I will eat someone’s hat. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Barbie

The Action Movie of the Year
Behold: a category in which every single entry is a sequel¹⁵. Truly, it is magnificent. I did like Guardians of the Galaxy 3 a whole lot, though. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Guardians of the Galaxy 3

¹⁵ I suppose if I’m being as charitable as I can, some of them are actually just movies in existing franchises that exist temporally in the same world as the other movies. 

The Movie of the Year
Anyway, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a better movie, even at only half a movie, than just about all of the rest of these put together, so it should also have been in more categories the end.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Shamelessly Punting: A Bunch of Things that Turn 20 in 2024

Wilco – A Ghost is Born

Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music

Coffee and Cigarettes

Drive-By Truckers – The Dirty South

Elliott Smith – From a Basement on a Hill

Leena Krohn – Tainaron: Mail From Another City

Two Cow Garage – The Wall Against Our Backs

Robyn Hitchcock – Spooked

David B – Epileptic

Shaun of the Dead

Xiu Xiu – Fabulous Muscles

Björk – Medúlla

Mean Girls

Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell

Battlestar Galactica

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus

Craig Thompson – Carnet de Voyage

Sunn0))) – White2

Deadwood

Tom Waits – Real Gone

Usher – Confessions

Spider Man 2

Isis – Panopticon

Terry Pratchett – Going Postal

The Thermals – Fuckin A

Comets on Fire – Blue Cathedral

Tom Goes to the Mayor

Sonic Youth – Sonic Nurse

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – Shake the Sheets

The Best Records of January 2024

It’s almost, but not quite, too late! I mean, this whole thing is arbitrary anyway, but, you know, if we acknowledge the ephemerality of everything we realize that all of society is a lie and that, therefore, a silly little list has the same weight in the grand scheme of things that it ever has.

Also, while I listened to the same several dozen new albums (give or take) this month as always, almost none of them came out in this month. So few, in fact, that this might be the only five albums I listened to that actually came out in January. 

So it goes.

Bruiser Wolf – My Story Got Stories (Bruiser Wolf isn’t just a weird rapper, or a funny rapper, but a genuinely incredible rapper, who sticks a genuinely-unique sound on top of world-class character-building skills that, nearly always, end in blowjob jokes. Bruiser Wolf may, in fact, be the hero we need and the hero we deserve)

Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino & Jim O’Rourke – With pats on the head, just one too few is evil one too many is good that’s all it is (I mean, the way these three put their talents together is surprising at a lot of turns, although it is comforting to know unequivocally who wrote that fucking title. Jesus.) 

Mary Halvorson – Cloudward (It sure sounds like MH letting her Amaryllis band – also itself called Amaryllis – get a little loosier and, perhaps, a little goosier.)

Sympathy Pain – Swan Dive (Midwife-assisted post-rock will always have a place in the ONAT heart)

Sleater-Kinney – Little Rope (After a bumpy period, I have to say they found something again, which is terrific. I haven’t had a tonne of favorite bands, but Sleater-Kinney were one of ‘em.)

The 66th Annual Grammy Awards

It’s Grammy time, everyone! It is the case that I, your humble blogger, have no idea what’s going on in the awards-show space these days. It’s clear that something is changing¹, and somehow that thing is never “don’t have an awards show”, for a number of structural reasons (i.e. there’s a lot of money tied up in this stuff still, somehow, and is therefore difficult to jettison), and so here we have an example of an awards show doing, well, nothing. Or rather, nothing that seems inappropriate².

¹ I mean this more basically than it might seem. For my entire adult life, the television industry has been in some form or another of free fall, it’s just that I think awards shows are one of the most interesting protuberances on the malignancy that is television, and started writing about them here, in part, because of their obvious inappropriateness for the way that anyone consumes television. This matters somewhat less in the case of the Grammys, an award show specifically about music, but it matters to the telecast, which is why it’s in a footnote and not in the main body. You’re welcome. 
² again, in the television sense. We’re like, two years out from the last major aftershocks of the Grammy’s recent history of being the worst. As an awards-granting body, I’ve seen nothing to instill anything like confidence. As a television-producing body, they seem to be doing things that make sense. 

There have, of course, been changes. There’s always rule changes. Five years ago they opened up the Big Four categories to ten nominees each, this year they’re back down to eight. They’ve drastically changed the way that the categories are laid out, reducing the number of fields to 12³, while also adding three categories⁴. The idea here is that votes are assigned across the field, and that fields that only had a few categories might not permit any given Grammy voter to use their entire ten votes, which seems fair⁵. They’ve also added the non-classical producer and songwriter credits into the general field which, again, seems to make sense because most of the music under consideration requires a producer and a songwriter to, you know, exist. They established a minimum level of involvement for album of the year, and they established a rule about AI. 

³ well, to eleven and the General Field, a way they’re pretty insistent about putting it over at Grammyville, but that is, in fact, 12. 
⁴ bringing us up to an eye-watering 94
⁵ I think, however, that it leads to some stuff where people have a few more nominations in them than they did in other fields, and we get a bit of diffusion, which I think is most apparent in the number of categories that SZA, specifically, appears in. This is not the same as saying it’s underserved, just that it seems easy to notice in light of this specific change. 

They did also take advantage, at least in this one case, of their native strengths: they’re a Major Award and they appeal largely to old people, so they’re going to have performances from Billy Joel and Joni Mitchell, the latter of which seems almost impossibly difficult to fathom only a few years ago. Plus U2 from The Sphere. You can already smell the spherecitement. 

Still and all, Trevor Noah is hosting! Jon Bon Jovi will be declared a person by MusiCares (but possibly only for this year)! Donna Summer, Gladys Knight, Laurie Anderson NWA Tammy Wynette and The Clark Sisters will all be declared as having achieved a lifetime! Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz will be recognized as having impacted the globe! Let’s have an awards show!

Best Music Film
I like Brett Morgen’s thing more than almost anyone else currently working in the music-documentary space, and I watch a lot of them. Oh, and this was affected by a change to the rules that remove a previous requirement that the film in question had to be 51% performance. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Brett Morgen, David Bowie: Moonage Daydream

Best Music Video
Gosh, it’s always weird to consider music videos on their musical merits. Or whatever merits there are to give one a Grammy.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kendrick Lamar, “Count Me Out”

Best Song Written for Visual Media
I think that “I’m Just Ken” deserves this, and I really mean that. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Mark Ronson & Andrew Wyatt, “I’m Just Ken” (from Barbie)

Best Score Soundtrack Album for Visual Media
Hey do we need to nominate John Williams for two more Grammys for doing the same thing he always does, every single time? Like, is that a thing we need to do for John Williams? I’m willing to argue: it is not. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Ludwig Goransson, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media
There are many things about Barbie that I’m not looking forward to having to have an opinion about, but the soundtrack is pretty great.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Barbie

Best Comedy Album
You sort of have to hope that the host is going to win here, right? I would feel pretty bad if he didn’t. Maybe it’s happened before. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Trevor Noah, I Wish You Would

Best Folk Album
There are, in fact, seven albums here. I assume this is because of a tie, but I also can’t find anywhere that officially confirms it, so maybe there’s just some general folk-happy folks that can’t stand to cut everyone. What I will say is that five of these are legitimately just as good as each other⁶, the Nickel Creek album was extra-great, and the Joni Mitchell thing, while not my cup of tea as such, is a downright impressive thing that it’s hard to be a jerk about.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell at Newport

⁶ that is to say: below replacement level. It’s a very sick burn, I assure you. 

Best Contemporary Blues Album
You know, I usually skip this category but, as noted below, I skipped a lot more categories than I usually do⁷, so why not check back in on the blues and see if there’s anything that I can get into in this, the year of our lord 2024, my fortieth year. Jesse Dayton has played guitar for much cooler folks than Samantha Fish, that’s a bummer. Also a bummer: almost everything else here. Luckily, there’s Bettye Lavette.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Bettye LaVette, LaVette!

⁷ the reason is merely because in order to write about categories I don’t spend time considering, I have to do a lot of research, and a lot of listening, and I don’t always have time for it. It means that a lot of the categories that I skip are categories that don’t get a lot of coverage anyway, which is a real bummer, but is also how it’s going this year. Sigh. 

Best Traditional Blues Album
Man, I was hoping this one would turn out better. I usually think of “traditional” blues as being the kind of blues I like⁸. This year, however, the Grammy voters did not shuffle that into the cards. Blucky.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Eric Bibb who, actually, is not blucky. That wasn’t fair what i said about him a second ago. I take it back. Just for Eric Bibb, though. 

⁸ this is a brain disease that also poisons my coverage of reggae, and it’s the way most people feel about country music and (increasingly) rock: my opinion about the blues (and reggae) is that the older it is, the better, and that the more people muck around trying to make us believe they’re old-timey, it’s never going to have worked. Anyway, I’ve more to say about that, but this isn’t really the place for it. 

Best Bluegrass Album
I’m often accused of contrarianism⁹, and I don’t think I’ve ever made an opinion in negation to someone else’s specifically, but it pleases me when my opinion is difficult to square with the consensus, and so I will say: I very much like this Mighty Poplar record. I like it more than Billy Strings and I like it (barely) more than Molly Tuttle. So there. It’s the Watchhouse guy and a punch brother! Among other things!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Mighty Poplar, Mighty Poplar

⁹ at this point it’s probably more accurate to say that I have been accused: very few accusations actually come my way these days

Best Americana Album
All of these albums are worth hearing, but the problem with Jason Isbell is that when’s actually operating at full-strength, nobody else has much of a chance. Alack.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jason Isbell, Weathervanes

Best American Roots Song
All that stuff is still true down here, also. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jason Isbell, “Cast Iron Skillet” (Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit)

Best Americana Performance
Boy howdy I would like to say it’s Tyler Childers, I really honestly would. Maybe next time.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, “King of Oklahoma”

Best American Roots Performance
I’m just going to say that I feel like an absolute ghoul because when I saw the Blind Boys of Alabama here my first thought was “can any of them still be alive?” And my subsequent thought was about some sort of blind gospel boy farm system, and basically I am the worst monster to ever live.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Rhiannon Giddens, “You Louisiana Man”

Best Country Album
Oh it’s still Zach Bryan, thank you for asking

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Zach Bryan, Zach Bryan

Best Country Song
I mean, this category goes to “whatever Kacey Musgraves is doing” regularly enough that that alone would have gotten it here but, luckily, “I Remember Everything” deserves it for a bunch of other reasons as well. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Zach Bryan & Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything” (Zach Bryan) 

Best Country Group/Duo Performance
And then down here they also do me the favor of taking advantage of the “Duo” in this category² in such a way that continues to make my job easier.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Zach Bryan, “I Remember Everything” (f Kacey Musgraves)

¹⁰ which I believe I have whinged about before, in fact

Best Country Solo Performance
On the one hand, I do genuinely like the Luke Combs cover of “Fast Car”, but ultimately not as much as Tyler Childers generally and, in this category, also specifically.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Tyler Childers, “In Your Love”

Best Alternative Jazz Album
This is a new category, about which I am very happy! It is a fact, inarguable, there are two of the ONAT top albums of 2023 in this category. I cannot deny it. Whether this means I should continue to be happy that someone at the Grammys is paying attention to something that doesn’t suck, or that I’m just becoming somehow even more uncool, I leave up to the reader to decide.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily, Love in Exile, aka the 60th best album of last year. Meshell Ndegeocello’s excellent The Omnichord Realbook was 64th. It’s math, really. 

Best Rap Album
This is where we find Drake either giving up or not giving up his Grammys boycott, since anyone of, like, six thousand people could have put the record (including his direct, above-the-title collaborator, 21 Savage) up for consideration. I suppose if he’d felt something about it, he would’ve said something. And, also, it’s not the rightful winner anyway.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Killer Mike, Michael

Best Rap Song
See what I mean? Look how many people are credited as songwriters on “Rich Flex”. The whole damn album is like that! It’s true that this isn’t surprising, all I’m saying is: there’s a lot of people who could have put this up, and it probably doesn’t say anything about Drake. Also that it’s always funny to count songwriters on big radio-pushed pop records.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Andre Benjamin, Paul Beauregard, James Blake, Michael Render, Tim Moore & Dion Wilson, “Scientists & Engineers” (Killer Mike)

Best Melodic Rap Performance
This category is still very bad! All rapping is melodic! The human voice is tonal! Music is music! What the fuck is wrong with everyone always!

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: SZA, “Low”

Best Rap Performance
While it’s still “Scientists & Engineers,” I must also say that I like what Black Thought has been doing lately, and it’s a viable contender. Also I am old. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Killer Mike, “Scientists and Engineers” (f Andre 3000, Future and Eryn Allen Kane)

Best R&B Album
[In which the writer struggles to say anything at all, because there is, simply put, nothing nice to say here]

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Summer Walker, Clear 2: Soft Life, which is definitely an album of music that was released, and about which I find it difficult to say more. 

Best Progressive R&B Album
The song categories, below, are about to get real brutal¹¹, so let’s just take a moment to be awash in the soothing glow of there being like, three good records in this category. Aaaaaah. So soothing.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: oh gosh it’s SZA and SOS, but like, Terrace Martin! Janelle Monae! Such relative quality!

¹¹ except for SZA, again, see below, and actually Robert Glasper, who didn’t make as good a showing as SZA, but whom I do like

Best R&B Song
There are, in fact, going to be three different SZA songs in a row declared the rightful winner in three different categories. I mention it not as a warning, but merely to note that the actual best of these songs is “Love Language,” but that’s only nominated in performance, so pretend it’s here instead of “Snooze.” Which could, in fact, come to think of it, be nominated in performance, and then everything would be right. We’d just have to solve the traditional vs. non-traditional thing. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kenny B. Edmonds, Blair Ferguson, Khris Riddick-Tynes, Solána Rowe & Leon Thomas, “Snooze” (SZA)

Best Traditional R&B Performance
Babyface is not a rightful winner here, to be sure, I just feel like he’s going to be in this category until I’m a hundred. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: SZA, “Love Language”

Best R&B Performance
I’m not sure how “Kill Bill” is less “traditional” than “Love Language”, but it sure does make my job easier.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: SZA, “Kill Bill”

Best Alternative Music Album
Look, jokes about the usefulness of the term “alternative” in meaningfully describing a type of music are as old about the use of “alternative” to describe a type of music, so moving past that, I must still ask: even in an ideal case¹², if all of the things in one category are, if not actually present in other categories, then other releases by artists that have been present in other categories¹³, why do you need this one? 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: PJ Harvey, for the admirably-weird I Inside the Old Year Dying

¹² that is, one in which the word used to describe the class of music made by these acts was sensible and led one to a reasonable conclusion about the sound of the bands
¹³ meaning PJ Harvey and The Gorillaz who, in more famous times, have each been nominated in a bunch of categories over the years. 

Best Alternative Music Performance
I worry that I’m not properly communicating my lukewarm feelings about Boygenius here.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Boygenius, “Cool About It”

Best Rock Album
I want there to be a better reason to like one of these than “the Foo Fighters are great generally and I like to giggle when Pat Smear wins Grammys, a thing that happens more than anyone would have thought in, say, 1981”.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Foo Fighters, But Here We Are

Best Rock Song
It’s just that I’ve seen The Decline of Western Civilization Part I like, seven thousand times, and thus it’ll always (even after a couple decades of it happening) make me laugh when Pat Smear wins a Grammy. Well done, Pat.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Dave Grohl, Rami Jaffee, Nate Mendel, Chris Shifflett & Pat Smear, “Rescued” (The Foo Fighters)

Best Metal Performance
This basically makes up for the rest of these seeming so reasonable. Disturbed?! The fuck?! It would be much less noticeable if I weren’t the only person that can’t seem to get behind Ghost’s thing¹⁴. I mean, I can absolutely get behind Slipknot’s thing¹⁵, and that’s also dumb but, like, it seems like a more fun, more-engaged kind of dumb.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Slipknot, “Hive Mind” (look, it is very, very dumb. There’s no getting around that point)

¹⁴ is the point that it’s stupid and that the music sounds bad? That can’t be the point, right? Is it the point? 
¹⁵ which would seem superficially similar to what Ghost is doing but 1) Slipknot isn’t self-aware and they aren’t doing it ironically, or as a weird Godardian distancing technique, or whatever dumbshit thing Ghost are doing and 2) their music doesn’t always sound like garbage. I mean, it’s sounded like garbage for the last few records, but they used to be a good band. I’ve been driving through Iowa a lot lately. I make no apologies for my stance. 

Best Rock Performance
Hey look! Everyone in the rock performance category is an actual rock band! This puts them very far ahead of any genre that isn’t explicitly Pop or Rap¹⁶. Excellent news. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Boygenius, “Not Strong Enough”

¹⁶ the latter seemingly only because it’s an indisputable mode of presentation. Come to think of it, there’s probably a pretty clean line in the instrumental categories for the same reason

Best Dance/Electronic Album
I have only ever liked The Chemical Brothers and James Blake among this set of people, and I like The Chemical Brothers’ recent work more than James Blake. Were that they were all so straightforward. Also, dear god I am old.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The Chemical Brothers, For That Beautiful Feeling

Best Pop Dance Recording
This is another of our new categories, here because they were shutting “real” dance music folks out with all those pop stars. Truly, every generation gets an authenticity debate that they deserve. And then we all get the rest of them, also, because everything is terrible forever.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding, “Miracle”

Best Dance/Electronic Recording
On the one hand, it seems like Fred Again is the only person that got nominated in this category that debuted in the last, like, decade. On the other hand, ew. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Aphex Twin, “Blackbox Life Recorder 21F”

Best Pop Vocal Album
Once again, I am sad that we could live in a world where there was a “best pop instrumental” category of any description at all, and instead we do not. Because this world is crap.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Olivia Rodrigo, Guts

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance
Look, it’s going to be “Ghost in the Machine” because of course it is, but just imagine for a moment a version of “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” that is a duet between Miley Cyrus and Brandi Carlile, because that’s what I thought of in the moment between when I read the name of their duet and remembered what song that was. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: SZA, “Ghost in the Machine” (f Phoebe Bridgers)

Best Pop Solo Performance
Mostly these are about as fine as they can be. I’m not sure I would have guess that all five of these women made songs that were nominated here that are all basically the exact-same level of “fine”¹⁷. That’s some kind of achievement, certainly.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”

¹⁷ which is to say that it’s a pretty boring Taylor Swift song, and an above-average Billie Eilish song, with everything else basically hanging in between the two. 

Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical
I do want to point out that one of the people in this category is here, in part, because of her work with HARDY, and that is very bad, and I do not like it. I don’t get a lot of opportunity to vent my frustration that we have HARDY walking around, and may this be the least, but jesus, that is some god-awful music right there. Anyway, it was never going to have been her anyway, which is a matter of some comfort, I suppose.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Justin Tranter

Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
I think the Olivia Rodrigo/Caroline Polachek dude did a great job, just not as good a job as Metro Boomin who, for all this particular record was overblown and dumb, did a good job producing it¹⁸, and that is, after all, what this award is for. He’d absolutely lose an award for editing, tho.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Metro Boomin’

¹⁸ such a good job, in fact, that there’s like thirty more minutes of it than there needs to be! 

Best New Artist
So this is the first time that I’ve had to consider this category since I started my most-recent Considered Listen and, honestly, I’m due to wrap it up in a few months, so this’ll be the only one. I think The War and Treaty, Noah Kahan and Ice Spice all make fine music. I think given the way that the Grammys give these things out it will be The War and Treaty, which is fine, because they are good, and also because they appear on Zach Bryan.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: The War and Treaty

Song of the Year
Would I like this Lana Del Rey song more if it was called “Amburgers and Wootbeer”? Maybe! Who can say! Anyway, I’m always happy for Dan Wilson to win these things, so he’s in.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jon Batiste & Dan Wilson, “Butterfly” (Jon Batiste)

Album of the Year
Most of these are fine, such as they are, but I really think Janelle Monae is alone in doing something that actually feels album-ish, at least musically speaking. That’s enough to put it over because, especially here at the end of the whole thing, we’re consuming some pretty thin gruel. 

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Janelle Monae, The Age of Pleasure

Record of the Year
You know, I’m still not Mr. Boygenius, and I don’t think I could rightly even claim to be a casual fan as such, but I do like “Not Strong Enough” well enough, and I think it’s probably the right call here.

THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Boygenius, “Not Strong Enough”

THE CATEGORIES I SKIPPED (I skipped an above-average number of categories this year, because things are significantly more busy than they sometimes are): Best Contemporary Classical Composition; Best Classical Compendium; Best Classical Vocal Solo; Best Classical Instrumental Solo; Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; Best Choral Performance; Best Opera Recording; Best Orchestral Performance; Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals; Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Engineered Album, Classical (although I feel I do want to point out that without a hyphen after best, as is the Grammy’s custom, this actually should just parse as “best album that is engineered,” which is every album. If you read this joke, congratulations!); Best Instrumental Composition; Best Immersive Audio Album; Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical; Producer of the Year, Classical; Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package; Best Recording Package; Best Album Notes; Best Historical Album; Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media; Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording; Best Children’s Album; Best New Age, Ambient Or Chant Album; Best Reggae Album; Best Global Music Album (still among my very least favorite categories in all of music-awards-dom!); Best African Music Performance; Best Global Music Performance; Best Tropical Latin Album; Best Música Mexicana Album (including Tejano); Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album; Best Música Urbana Album; Best Regional Roots Music Album; Best Roots Gospel Album; Best Contemporary Christian Music Album; Best Gospel Album; Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song; Best Gospel Performance/Song; Best Musical Theater Album; Best Contemporary Instrumental Album; Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album; Best Latin Jazz Album; Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album; Best Jazz Instrumental Album; Best Jazz Vocal Album; Best Jazz Performance; Best Spoken Word Poetry Album;