On the Relevance of Musical Awards

Taylor Swift won a bunch of Grammys last night, including "Album of the Year." But if a fairly small percentage of music listeners have heard the album, or its competitors, why should anyone care?

I'll ignore the meta-question about whether music awards make sense at all - judging aesthetic pieces of art as to their objective value is fairly silly. But accepting a world in which its reasonable to give albums star ratings (or number ratings, if you're Pitchfork), award shows still require more than that to be relevant. They need a shared experience.

When I was younger, I enjoyed the MTV Video Music Awards a lot. In fact, my first conversation with my high school best friend was about the 1997 VMAs (remember that one? Busta Rhymes and Martha Stewart, Sting and P. Diddy, Bruce Springsteen and the Wallflowers - lot to discuss the day after). The reason why? Everyone watched the same videos. Everyone had opinions about which one was best because, even if they preferred music that wasn''t represented in the show, they knew enough about the people who were a part of it to have an opinion.

Now? I see a handful of music videos every year, and those generally once or twice. For the Grammys - if I don't like something a good deal, its unlikely that I'll listen to it. Before the internet/iPods/smart phones, even if someone had non-mainstream music interests, they had to interact with mainstream music via the radio, or music video, or just the opinions of their peers. And not just the occasional "oh, I heard that Taylor Swift song a few times, and I liked that one Beyonce song" - exposure was pretty constant. Now? I had only the vaguest notion of who Taylor Swift was until she played SNL, and even then I fast-forwarded through her performances after the first 30 seconds. It wasn't until Kanye interrupted her that I realized how big she was. [By the way, hasn't Kanye suffered enough? He wasn't at the Grammys, I presume because no one lets him go to any awards show anymore. The dude made Taylor Swift's Q rating double. Can't people let it go?]

So I honestly hadn't listened all the way through to any Album of the Year candidates. My main rooting interest was for "I'm on a Boat" in that R&B Collaboration category. Once I realized the interesting performances were over (and really, they were done when Gaga and Elton finished the opening), I turned it off. And I don't think I was alone. Heck, a lot of people probably didn't even turn it on.

Weirdly, the only award show the Grammys might have a longer lifespan than are the VMAs, which are really pointless, now that watching music videos seems so 1997. MTV should just have music performances surrounding a reality TV awards show. Live music + reality TV? Now THAT would be very 2010.