At first glance, the 62nd Grammy Awards appeared to demonstrate unforeseen levels of representation within an industry infamous for its domination by Old White Men.
Billie Eillish took home all four major categories, the youngest and first female artist to do so. Other diverse figures received some recognition: Tyler, the Creator took home his first Grammy after a decade of serving as a major influence in modern music, and Lil Nas X, a gay black man, won Best Pop Duo/Performance with Billie Ray Cyrus for his country/ pop hybrid.
And yet the perfunctory attempts of the Recording Academy to create a guise of “inclusivity” in order to remain relevant only appear to reflect how out of touch the dated institution truly is. Despite some attempts throughout the years to update the award show’s categories to ‘reflect the times,’ the idea of forced genre categorization itself feels out of touch.
The fact that all four major Grammy nominations went to a woman feels like a cheap win when they all went to the “same woman,” leaving other year-defining artists such as Lizzo and Lil Nas X in the dust. It begs the question: is this really representation?
Tyler, the Creator later made some of the night’s most articulate and pointed commentary in an interview on his first Grammy win:
“I’m very grateful that what I made could be acknowledged in a world like this,” Tyler said. “ But also, it sucks that whenever we — and I mean guys that look like me — do anything that’s genre-bending or that’s anything, they always put it in a rap or urban category, which is — I don’t like that ‘urban’ word. That’s just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me.”
His interview instantly went viral, and not just because he was publicly criticizing the mysteriously all-powerful organization that supposedly decides the worthiness of musician’s careers. But because he is not the only person noticing the odd imbalance that runs rampant in the Academy’s nomination practices. IGOR is one of 2019’s most brilliant musical masterpieces and certainly worthy of recognition, but for its 39-minute run time, any rap elements that the album possess appear to exist in the background. Tyler shows off his talents in singing, producer, arranging, and, yes, rapping. But the catchy beats and jazz-influences of IGOR are a far cry from the sound of his debut as a “rapper” and part of abrasive hip-hop collective Odd Future. It seems odd that this album only received recognition as Best Rap Album.
“When I hear that, I’m just like why can’t we be in pop? Half of me feels like the rap nomination was just a backhanded compliment,” Tyler said. “Like, my little cousin wants to play the game. Let’s give him the unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it — that’s what it felt like a bit.”
Increasingly, the categorizations being used by the Recording Academy after 62 years seem to only evidence their overuse. As the music industry becomes more and more fluid and representative of the Real World (45.4% of Top 100 artists from 2012-2019 came from people of color), the Grammys have tried to keep up without actually issuing any structural change… and it shows.
In 2012, the Academy created an Urban Contemporary category in an attempt to compensate for their historical lack of diversity. The artists that have fallen into this category since the years of its creation range from Lizzo’s pop anthems, Frank Ocean’s modern R&B, and The Carters’ seamless rap duets. All are artists that “could ” be recognized by the four major categories, but are instead told to sit content with their untelevised and lesser award. Of course, it’s a great thing that artists of color are winning Grammys, but why do they need their own removed category to do so? Former governor of the Recording Academy’s San Francisco chapter, Zoe Keating, admitted to Pitchfork that “people vote for who they know.” There is something inherently wrong about a board of long-time executives (read: Old White Men) with a clear interest in the night’s winners, gathering to decide that artists of color should receive recognition in a separate, “urban” category.
Beyond reasons of representation, the preexisting Grammy categorizations have proven resistant to modern music. As genre-blending music with disparate influences increasingly enters the popular sphere, experimentalism is encouraged and the classical structure of a “pop song” that once made the “major” popular categories easy to define and accept is all but defunct.
The Grammys are not alone in suffering from this phenomena. Earlier this year, Billboard released a list of the top rock songs of the 2010s according to their charting data… and to no surprise it outraged hardcore fans of rock ‘n’ roll. The lists’ top three songs are dominated by the supposed “rock” band Imagine Dragons. This is obviously a direct reflection of chart success, but I find it hard to believe that any self-proclaimed rock music fan is listening to Imagine Dragons, or the lists’ other features: twenty one pilots, Walk The Moon, and The Lumineers. It appears as though the mere existence of an electric guitar has led whoever is in charge of this kind of thing at Billboard to classify a number of acts collectively viewed as pop bands under “rock.” This decision, therefore, stifles the visibility of genuine rock and roll acts that, by definition, aren’t as popular as pop bands and can’t top their charting abilities.
Of course, whether or not the over-produced synth beats of Imagine Dragons is “rock” or not is completely subjective. But that’s the whole point — these classifications necessarily affect the representation of potentially more deserving artists in any given category… and who gets to decide?
Tame Impala are often cited as a prolific example of “indie” music permeating popular culture. This classification seems natural at first: the Australian artist releases lo-fi bangers that, despite their popularity, are anything but on par with the high-tempo, catchy pop tunes that typically saturate the Top 40 charts. Alternative legends such as Pitchfork continue to champion Tame Impala’s music even as pop fans are increasingly taking notice and they begin selling out stadium tours. This gives them a lasting credibility in “indie” circles even as they become somewhat mainstream.
And yet, they’ve released all three of their major albums on Modular Recordings, an Australian subsidiary of major record label and entertainment conglomerate Universal Music. The use of “indie” as a way to describe an artist was once reserved purely for acts on smaller, more subcultural, independent record labels — but somewhere along the lines, this got lost in translation. By all modern uses of the word, Tame Impala are the absolute embodiment of indie music — the quintessential example of the musical choice of an “indie” personality. But if one were to rigidly define the genre, they would not qualify.
So what does this mean for this certain musical classification? Well, nothing. To the concerns of anyone listening to their music, when they listen to Tame Impala they’re listening to indie. If someone (say, the Recording Academy) were to insist on defining their music within boundaries that no longer have any meaning, it would come across as out of touch and outdated.
By and large, the use of these outdated genres as a mechanism for compartmentalization has no real meaning in contemporary culture. There has, thankfully, been an endless inpour of musical innovation and experimentalism since the Recording Academy gave out their first Best Contemporary (Pop) Album to The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ” in 1968. This constant alteration is a necessary and natural aspect of music’s life cycle. When Chuck Berry performed his first duck walk on an electric guitar in the mid-1950s, the world simply did not know how to respond. Of course, now, what we know to be rock ‘n’ roll is fan favorite of every dad-heavy barbeque and overall crowd pleaser — who doesn’t love The Rolling Stones? But in his time, Berry was one of a number of musical innovators who paved the way for what we now perceive as “standard” music vis-a-vis Billboard and Recording Academy categorizations.
Would Chuck Berry have imagined the soaring vocals and acrobatics of a band like twenty one pilots to be categorized as one of the best artists of the decade in a genre he fought so hard to create? Probably not. But according to Billboard, there’s nowhere else to put them.
Ultimately, we need to reevaluate the role that genre plays in modern day music categorization. In order for music to naturally evolve, we cannot restrict the industry to ancient systems of compartmentalization that merely stifle experimentalism and creativity while perpetuating industry segregation and racism. The refusal of antiquated orgs like the Recording Academy to enact the necessary structural change only points to their fast-approaching journey into total irrelevancy.