Arcade Fire slays Goliath

Sunday night was host to the Grammy Awards, and unlike recent shows, viewers weren’t complaining about how boring the show was (although it was still pretty boring). Instead, they were complaining about one of the night’s upsets: Arcade Fire’s win for Album of the Year. The honor showed the Grammy Awards splitting down the middle, torn between a desire to award the best artistic statement and the need to award the biggest selling artist.

Arcade Fire’s award seemed completely out of place. The band seemed puny next to Eminem, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga (which is a bit misinformed, considering that Arcade Fire can sell out venues like Madison Square Garden). But once they won, the vitriol started to fly across the web.

Tumblr created a special page just to house social network comments from people who were angry about the band’s victory. Most of the commentators were simply mad that a band they weren’t familiar with had won Album of the Year. I’ll avoid the cheap shot of trying to find a correlation between the percentage of correctly spelled words and IQ, but it’s hard not to pay attention to what was actually said.

Most of the comments revolved around the idea that Eminem or Lady Gaga should have won because they sold considerably more albums or were better known, which shows a complete lack of understanding of the award’s purpose. The best album is not necessarily the most popular, something many people fail to grasp. I would even argue that the better an album is, the less likely it is able to appeal to huge populations.

In order to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, an album has to shave off some of its more ambitious elements, which are bound to frighten or turn off more conservative listeners. The Beatles might seem like a notable exception to this theory, but they hooked listeners with the early pop albums, then held on to them as the albums became more ambitious.

So where does this leave the Grammy Awards? Will they continue to choose the year’s best album or will they revert to choosing the year’s best-selling album? My suggestion to them: If sales are more important than quality, then change the award’s name. Best-Selling Album of the Year wouldn’t leave anyone surprised, and it would fit in nicely with the show’s usual corporate bent.