Sound Check

I have to say I’m pretty excited for the Oscars. I saw most of the Best Picture nominees this year, and I’d really be quite happy seeing any of them win.

Despite its nonsensical tradition of rejecting nearly every funny movie ever made, I do think the Oscars consistently succeed in giving out credit where it’s due. And I will tune in when it airs.

If only such a large-scale ceremony existed for musicians, too. Just a sign of appreciation for our favorite songwriters and performers, covering all the appropriate bases – best song, album, music video – in one award show. It’s just a shame that it isn’t the Grammys.

Last week, the 52nd annual ceremony only fueled my suspicion that the event is turning into a freak show rather than an awards show. I tuned in for a little bit, saw some performances that were absurd enough to be funny and managed to sit through a couple awards that weren’t really funny, just absurd.

Then again, they only felt like excuses for an Elton John collaboration stunt. I gotta say, Elton forcing teamwork with totally incompatible musical personalities might be all I’ll watch the Grammys for anymore – it was a bull’s-eye with Eminem in 2001, and it was another with Lady Gaga this time.

Award shows are supposed to be timely, so why did the Grammys feel outdated? In an era where more artists are actually succeeding based on the merit of their music alone, maybe a glorified popularity contest doesn’t fit reality like it used to. If the Oscars were this way, we could reasonably predict right now that “Dear John” would take Best Picture next year.

Really though, my biggest problem with the Grammys was its illusions that once-relevant things are still relevant today.

Some music still wins for heavy radio play even though nobody was listening because it’s 2010. It ruins an award as easily as insisting on separate categories for best song and best record (also a song).

Take Wilco, who was nominated for Best Americana Album this year after winning Best Alternative Album in 2004. I’m not entirely sure what qualifies as an Americana album, but I’m even less sure how Americana or even Alternative qualifies as a genre worth acknowledging in this decade.

The Best New Artist category had five nominees coming from every direction and was ultimately claimed by the Zac Brown Band. The rookie-of-the-year debate is always a fun and interesting one, but would anyone actually narrow it down to those exact five?

It’s hard to picture any one person in the Academy nominating Zac Brown’s radio-molded country as well as the shoegaze rock of the Silversun Pickups, another nominee.

I just can’t hear, “I loved MGMT, but they’re no Zac Brown” coming from a group of professionals, because MGMT simply has no place in, near or around a debate with a country band.

So I now expect very little from these shows. The Video Music Awards wasn’t sending the clearest message when Beyonce won best overall video but couldn’t quite beat out the field for the best female video – Kanye West knows what I mean.

I also had hope for the MTVU Woodies, intended for the most popular music on college radio, to bring a little justice to artists who can’t otherwise get playtime. Well, I saw right through that, too, somewhere between Green Day winning something over Animal Collective and Never Shout Never winning ... something.

It’s time the Grammys made a change. Somehow, I doubt that even Kings of Leon considers “Use Somebody” as the pride of its catalogue.