Perusing the 55th annual Grammy Awards nominees

RUNNING NUMBERS

The winners and losers in this year's Grammy game

By: MATT ASHARE |  


Published: December 11, 2012

When the nominations for the 55th annual Grammy Awards were announced last week, several salient idiosyncrasies were rather readily apparent. For starters, six fairly diverse artists are officially in the running for as many as six wins, the very same number that a dominant Adele managed to pull off earlier this year at the 54th annual awards show. They include: an out-of-the-closet New Orleans-bred r&b singer (Frank Ocean); a blooze-rocking child of the Rubber City (Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach); a slickly groomed soul-rap superstar (Kanye West); a group of scruffy British folkies (Mumford & Sons); one bona fide hip-hop mogul (Jay-Z); and, perhaps most perplexingly, three former indie-rock dudes who've masterfully cracked the mainstream dance-pop code (fun.). Of equal note, particularly in the wake of Adele's triumph, is the absolute absence of anyone of the feminine persuasion among the six with six club. And, for anyone who, like myself, enjoys pointless, yet amusing little coincidences, we've also got two Springsteens: first there's the guy belatedly known as the Boss, whose Obama campaign rouser "We Take Care of Our Own" got Grammy props in two strangely similar categories (Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song). And then there's the song "Springsteen," a heartfelt helping of twangy cheese that earned a couple of nods for Nashville up-and-comer Eric Church (Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance).

       The organization that inaugurated the Grammys in 1957 — the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, or NARAS — is a bit of a strange creature. Open to producers, recording engineers, musicians, songwriters, and other industry types with proven track records, it tends to reward seniority and professionalism. That's put NARAS in the paradoxical position of bringing an inherently conservative viewpoint to an ever-shifting, often volatile cultural landscape, with sometimes comical results. So, for example, when NARAS made its first attempt to recognize belatedly the emergence of a new strain of heavy metal in 1989, things went notoriously awry: Metallica's genre defining …And Justice for All went up against Jane's Addiction's groundbreaking Nothing's Shocking in a newly created hybrid category Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental and the winner was. . . Crest of a Knave, an arguably irrelevant album by classic rockers Jethro Tull.

       NARAS has done its best over the past two decades to make up for that particularly embarrassing Grammy gaffe, and to reinforce the relevance of the annual awards show, with admittedly mixed results. In 1991 — the year Nirvana's Nevermind turned the music industry on its head — the organization was moved to include Best Alternative Rock Music Album among its commendations. But, three of the first four winners — Sinead O'Connor, R.E.M., and U2 — were kinda like your parents' idea of "alternative." And the other, Tom Waits in 1993, was someone your parents were more likely to be familiar with. Indeed it wasn't until 1996 that Nirvana won that category for MTV Unplugged in New York, the final album the trio recorded together before Kurt Cobain's death.

       So, while sales figures do most assuredly play a role in the nomination and final voting process, the Grammys have never been purely a popularity contest, a fact that partially explains the absence of tween sensation Justin Beiber from this year's slate of nominees. Instead, NARAS has tended in recent years to do its level best to reflect its own idea of what its members might imagine a respectable music industry should look like, without losing too much cultural currency. That's why it's almost always been a bad idea to bet against legacy artists like Springsteen, Clapton, or even the Who, who will be the recipients of a lifetime achievement award at this year's show, on February 10, or a performer like Adele or Norah Jones, both of whom embody what we like to think of as timeless, if somewhat obviously nostalgic, musical values. (It's probably worth mentioning that Adele is once again in the running, this time for her Live at the Royal Albert Hall rendition of "Set Fire to the Rain" in the Best Pop Solo Performance category.)

       But neither Adele nor Springsteen are up for any of the "big" awards. No, the biggies this year, weighted, as they are, in favor of male performers, may almost represent a more realistic cross section of where we are culturally at this particularly confusing moment in history. Mumford & Sons offer a comforting flashback to a simpler, pre-digital way of life, just as the Black Keys and Jack White, whose Blunderbuss made the cut for Album of the Year, deliver familiar classic-rock tropes dressed up in hipster cool. And then there's Frank Ocean, whose decision to come clean about his sexual orientation earlier this year cut against the grain of mainstream hip-hop's hyper-masculine bravado just as a majority of voters were beginning to think twice about supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. But, in terms of pure fun, we've got fun., an unabashedly stylized, GBLT-leaning hook machine who came out of the underground to embrace digitally enhanced grooves and carefree escapism delivered with an earnest sincerity that suggests nothing so much as hope for a better or, at least, less depressing future.

       And yet, the boys are going to have to deal with at least a couple of formidable females, including Taylor Swift, whose definitive "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" is up there with Kelly Clarkson's defiant "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" as a strong contender for Record of the Year. Frankly, along with hoping for a fun.-filled Grammys, I'm kinda pulling for Clarkson, especially in Best Pop Solo Performance, where she's up against rising tween queen Carly Rae Jepsen, as well as two songstresses who didn't have new studio albums in 2012 (Katy Perry and Adele). But, most of all, I'm hoping that Bruce will show up on stage to belt out "Springsteen" with Eric Church at his side because that would be almost as much fun as fun..