There's no way anyone can beat Adele at the Grammys. She's that combination of talent and mass appeal that Grammy voters love -- a best-selling, critically-acclaimed artist who everyone loves. 21 is one of those rare across-the-board hits like Thriller or The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Music snobs love her, pop music fans love her, Glee fans love...I've heard that "Rolling in the Deep" was even a bit hit on R&B stations, a rarity for a white artist.
It's also nice that The Decemberists were nominated. Mumford and Sons and Bon Iver will definitely pick up some awards, but Nicki Minaj will probably take best new artist. Which is...weird. I love Nicki Minaj but I would not call her a new artist by any stretch of the imagination. I've been aware of her for a couple years, before Pink Friday came out, which is over a year old now. The Grammys are slow.
Also, it's a little crazy that last year's best album, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, isn't nominated for album of the year. I like that Rihanna album fine, but it wasn't her best.
I'm glad Bon Iver's "Holocene" is getting so much love. A great, great song. Though I would've also given "Beth/Rest" a nomination for "Best Song That Sounds Like a Lost Steve Winwood Track from 1986."
For the record, here's who I would've added to the Grammy nominations:
Feist, Metals (this may have missed the voting cut off, now that I think about it)
Cults -- I love this album. Easily best new artist of the year.
Saigon, Greatest Story Never Told -- For my money, the best hip hop album this year.
Wye Oak, Civilian -- Really should have been nominated in "Best Alternative." Sorry everyone, that recent Radiohead album is not very good.
Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What -- Kind of shocked that Grammy voters weren't all over this. Maybe they got so tired of getting a bad rap for only nominating older artists that they decided to ignore the great, return-to-form albums by veterans. Foo Fighters could've sat out a year for this album, which is easily Simon's best since Graceland.
Also: Lykke Li, tune-yards, Drake, Black Keys, M83, Wild Flag, TV on the Radio, Fleet Foxes, Stevie Nicks, Tori Amos who all had great albums this year.
What music did you like this year?
Corey I'm gonna need you to slop slinging grease at my girl Adele. She and Kanye will still be relevant 15 years from now.
Also Florence + The Machine's Ceremonial (which was great btw) was outside this years nomination period of 9/1/2010-9/30/2011. So hopefully she will be nominated at the 2013 awards!
Also if Adele doesn't clean up at the Grammy's I'm burning something down.
You can borrow my lighter,.
Both albums are great and deserve nominations. It is ridiculous that MBDTF gets nominated in every other category except Album of the Year. The Rihanna and Foo Fighters albums do not deserve to be there. Particularly Foo Fighters. I do not understand the enduring popularity of that harmless but thoroughly mediocre band.
Adele will live on. That girl is freaking amazing. Who knew a bad breakup could inspire such magnificence?
I like to say that cheating is acceptable only because it inspired Fleetwood Mac's album Rumors. Same thing here. Breaking someone's heart was worth it because Adele channeled it into greatness.
Mumford and Son's album Sigh No More is one of the best albums I've heard in awhile. They are poets, simply put. They set poetry to beautiful music. I never buy music, I refuse to (because I have Pandora and prefer to read books rather than have annoying speakers in my ears). But I bought that album.
You've given me a great idea for a future blog post. Thanks!
I am a die hard music fan who hasn't had any time/money to listen to a lot of new stuff lately because of my pre-med course load, but I DID buy Ceremonials and I DO listen to it nonstop while I'm doing data scrubbing at my research job. It's fantastic. They are all of my favorite things from all of my favorite artists from days gone by, making NEW music together. My only complaint is the level of synthesized sound on some of the instrumentation. If the purist inside me ignores that, the album is pretty much perfect.