How the Grammys get it wrong every year

KANYE stormed the stage AGAIN at yesterday’s Grammys when Beyonce was snubbed for the top trophy. And here’s why he was right to do so.

OPINION

THE Grammy Awards are a bizarre institution.

The US’s top musical prize has an absurd array of categories that includes — I kid you not — Best Tropical Latin Album, Best Spoken Word Album for Children, Best Polka Album and even Best Album Notes.

But, despite the fact the small gold gramophones have been handed out for nearly six decades, they fail spectacularly every single year. Here’s why.

The Grammys have a long and dubious history of handing out the Album of the Year trophy to the wrong artist.

They make gobsmackingly conservative choices that give a pat on the back to veterans well past their prime, rather than artists who are at the cutting edge or whose albums are generally considered that year’s standout.

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Kanye West storms the stage as Beck beats Beyoncé to win Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards.

This year’s winner of Album of the Year is a perfect example.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences overlooked the favourite to win — Beyoncé’s self-titled album — to hand the prize to venerable folk-rocker Beck for his 12th LP Morning Phase.

Beyoncé’s effort was a critical and commercial triumph when she dropped it on an unsuspecting public in December of 2013, and it was considered the best work from an artist at the top of her game.

Not only was it a cracking album full of sexy and subversive pop moments, it sold by the bucketload.

Beck’s album was equally lauded by critics, and rightfully so, but Morning Phase is a comeback effort from a singer-songwriter well past his inventive best and a sonic retread of an album he released in 2002, Sea Change.

So, on the one hand, we have an artist who is pushing the boundaries of her craft and taking her fans along for the ride; on the other, an ageing folkster who peaked more than a decade ago and has rehashed an old idea that worked well 13 years ago.

Goddamn Yeezy … Kanye West shakes his head at the Album of the Year choice. Picture: AFP/Robyn Beck

Kanye West can always be relied on for an outlandish response to these apparent injustices, and he didn’t disappoint after Monday’s show.

He half jokingly stormed the stage when Beck’s name was called in a moment eerily reminiscent of his “Imma let you finish” insurrection when Taylor Swift pipped Beyonce for Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

“I don’t know what he said, all I know is if the Grammys want real artists to keep coming back, they need to stop playing with us,” West said after the show, which was held on Sunday night in Los Angeles.

“We ain’t gonna play with them no more … Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé, and at this point, we tired of it.”

West is bonkers in the way that all proper artists are. But, here’s the thing: He has a point.

Dammit … Beyoncé misses out on music’s biggest prize. Picture: AFP/Robyn Beck

A glance at the list of Album of the Year winners from the Grammy’s history reveals that the judges regularly snub the world’s premier artists when they’re at the top of their game, and then award them the top gong decades later when they’re no longer at their innovative best.

They did it most famously with Bob Dylan. All of the living legend’s landmark albums — Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Blonde on Blonde (1996), Blood on the Tracks (1975) — were overlooked when they were released, but he won Album of the Year in 1998 with his somnambulant effort Time Out of Mind. (Side note, he beat out one of the most influential albums of the decade, Radiohead’s OK Computer, for the top gong.)

It’s as though the Grammys are overcompensating for past sins by handing over the top awards retrospectively.

Even Prince seems perplexed by the choice of winner. Picture: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images/AFP

And there is a long list of other artists who fall into the same category:

● Robert Plant, 2009: The academy awarded the Led Zeppelin frontman Best Album for his forgettable album with Alison Krauss, Raising Sands. Did any of Led Zep’s iconic albums get a look-in during the ’70s? Not on your life.

● Herbie Hancock, 2008: The Grammys passed on Amy Winehouse’s instant classic Back to Black to award the Album of the Year to veteran pianist Herbie Hancock for River: The Joni Letters (which was a tribute to legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who also never won Album of the Year).

● Steely Dan, 2001: Forget Radiohead’s Kid A or Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. The Grammys gave it to these crusty old fogies for Two Against Nature.

See also the old-guy comeback stories of Ray Charles (2005 for Genius Loves Company), Santana (2000, Supernatural), Tony Bennett (1995, MTV Unplugged) and Eric Clapton (1993, MTV Unplugged).

Some years their Albums of the Year choices were bang on — Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories last year, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999, Paul Simon’s Graceland in 1987, MJ’s Thriller in 1984 and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1968 — but, sadly, these are notable exceptions.

But don't cry for Beyonce, guys. In 20 years' time when she's run out of ideas, she'll pump out a covers record of Etta James or something and finally nab the top prize.

Kanye sends a signal to the Grammy judges. Picture: AFP/Robyn Beck

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