The Grammys haven't been actually relevant to real music for a long, long time. After all, Macklemore got the Grammy for Hip Hop for a contrived song about going thrift shopping.
The grammys started out irrelevant, and barely managed to achieve
marginal relevancy toward the end of their second decade. Consider
that they started in 1958, now knowing the history of music through
the next 15 years, you can probably think of about 20 names of
individuals and groups which produced world changing music in that
period, and sold immense quantities of music at the same time.
Now go look at the list of grammy record, album, and song of the
year for 1958 to 1973, and what name do you find? Oh, look, they
gave the Beatles a grammy for "Michelle" in 1967 (!), and grudgingly
acknowledged Sgt Pepper in '68. Well, the group had only totally
dominated the music biz for the previous four years, so they were
out of ways to ignore them, so a grand total of
two grammys
out of a total of 22 during their active period, when they were
universally regarded as the top musical act in the world... err, well
by everybody but the people who chose the grammys. Beyond that,
you will find the lists filled with Frank Sinatra, Percy Faith, Henry
Mancini, even BoB Newhart, and no sign of rock whatsoever. The first
glimmer of chart dominating _pop_ music came with recognition of
the Fifth Dimension, then folk pop by Simon and Garfunkel, James
Taylor, and Carole King, but that begins at the very end of '60s,
and still no rock recognized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Record_of_the_Year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Song_of_the_Year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Album_of_the_Year Even the best new artist category, which had to acknowledge the
Beatles total domination of record sales in 1965, has almost
no rock entries, even as nominees. In 1967, the tectonic upheaval
year for rock, the award wasn't even given. Cream were nominated in
1969!! apparently it took them that long to learn about the group
which had formed in '66 and dissolved in '68, so that the appalling
irrelevance of the grammys was only underlined when they were beaten
out by *Jose Feliciano*, who had only been on the scene since 1960...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Best_New_Artist After the Beatles, the next rock act to make it to best new artist
was CSN&Y, in 1970, and you can reasonably assume the electors only
heard the folk vocal selections of the group's output. It took until
1983 and 84 before rock performance of any sort started to appear
at all in the main award categories of the grammys (this after a small
collection of "best rock" categories were created in 1980 in an abortive
attempt to ghettoize the music), and looking back on the previous 25 years,
the artists not ever recognized so utterly eclipse the vacuous forgettable
winning songs and artists that it is so pathetic as to be beyond embarrassing.
No wonder no one takes this dog and pony show seriously, especially anyone
alive to watch the trainwreck transpire relentlessly every year. A celebration
of fossils rewarding anyone helping to delay progress in the field of music.
...