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Winners and choosers
Green Day give way to Ray’s night
BY MATT ASHARE
Related Links

Matt Ashare review's Green Day's American Idiot

Green Day's official Web site

Damien McCaffery review's Kanye West's The College Dropout

Kanye West's official Web site

It could have been Kanye West’s night: he came in leading the pack with a full 10 nominations, which is what tends to happen when you leave your mark on half a dozen of the biggest albums of the year. It could have been Alicia Keys’s night: she was right behind West with eight nominations, and this wasn’t the first time she’d been so honored. And like that blessed optimist Bono, who tipped his hat to Green Day after U2’s "Vertigo" got the Gramophone for Best Rock Song, I had hoped it would be Green Day’s night. After all, the now veteran East Bay trio not only make a major political statement on American Idiot (Reprise) but sound great doing it, and they’ve reached a level of success unprecedented even for them thanks in large part to the massive crossover of the singles "American Idiot" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Hell, just a couple weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly credited Billie Joe and his buddies with "saving rock."

Instead, "music’s biggest night," the 47th Annual Grammy Awards, were all about Ray, as in Ray Charles. Not, in my opinion, because the album he recorded shortly before passing away last year, the duets project Genius Loves Company (Concord), ranks anywhere near the top of the dozens and dozens of great recordings he released while he was alive, but because it was the great pianist/singer/songwriter’s final album. Couple that with a big-budget Hollywood bio-pic on Charles (six Oscar nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor), add collaborations with the likes of Norah Jones and Elton John (whose contributions to the album were actually competing against each other in the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals category), and it’s hard to imagine that it could have happened any other way — with eight awards, most in big, big categories, going Ray’s way and blocking West, Keys, or Green Day from scoring a major sweep.

But everyone’s supposed to be a winner on Grammy night, right? As the old saying goes, it’s an honor just to be nominated. Yeah, tell that to Kanye West, the rapper/producer who had to suffer the humiliation of losing the Best New Artist award to Maroon 5, a band so innocuous that NYC gossip columnists say they’ve been spotted getting turned away by doorman at a couple of exclusive Manhattan parties over the past two months. (West also lost Album of the Year to Ray, Song of the Year to Jon Mayer, and a few others along the way.) So when he finally did get the nod in the Best Rap Album category for The College Dropout (Roc-A-Fella), he didn’t waste much time with the usual thank yous. No, instead West let a little of his frustration show as he held up his trophy and boasted, "I’m going to celebrate . . . because I’m at the Grammys baby!" He concluded, with just a touch of bitterness in his voice, by revealing, "A lot of people were wondering what I was going to do if I didn’t win. . . . I guess we’ll never know."

Yeah, but West, who’s become almost as ubiquitous as Lil’ Jon in the rap world, had to figure he’d win at least one hip-hop award. Getting shut out in all those other non-hip-hop categories had to be a disappointment. Not that that kept him from making a major impression with his performance of "Jesus Walks," a hip-hop tune that takes rapping all the way back to the church — in this case to a funeral service replete with wailing women and a coffin centerpiece. But West has nothing to worry about: he’ll be back. Maroon 5, on the other hand, should savor their little coup.

The irony of this year’s Grammy Awards is that on paper at least, the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) came closer than it ever has to a goal that was set more than a decade ago: broadening Grammy’s base to reflect current musical trends more accurately. Gone are the days when a past-their-prime Jethro Tull could beat out megalithic Metallica in a heavy-metal category. Even Bono had to admit that this was the best Grammys he’d ever encountered. And the list of nominees, even in some of the marquee categories, was notably up to date. Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Los Lonely Boys, Ryan Adams, and Hoobastank may not be household names, but they were all nominated in important categories. Los Lonely Boys even won the award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. Now if they could only get rid of those unwieldy category titles. Oh, and if it’s any measure of how far Grammy has come, Mass metalheads Killswitch Engage may not have had a shot against eventual winners Motšrhead in the Best Metal Performance category, but at they were in there among the nominees.

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Issue Date: February 18 - 24, 2005
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