The 2011 Grammy Awards

As long as I can remember, the Grammy Awards always disappoint.

When I was a child, I would watch (keep in mind, there were very few outlets for music before MTV) the award show every year and each time I would walk away frustrated that my choice usually wasn’t selected.

I remember Debbie Boone, the Starland Vocal Band, and it always seemed that they’d give Stevie Wonder an award for something.

All of it led me to the point where I don’t put a lot of weight into what happens at the Grammy’s and I certainly don’t take it as seriously as the show would like you to believe it is. And while it’s cool to see a beneath the mainstream artist wins an award, you don’t really lose much sleep over it when they don’t.

But I was genuinely surprised when Arcade Fire won the award for Album of the Year. It clearly was an upset and virtually no one in their right mind would have thought they had a snowball’s chance in Saskatchewan of winning.

See how I made a nonsensical funny there?

There performance was good, but not good enough for “normal” people to rush out and buy The Suburbs. In fact, even Barbara Streisand wasn’t quite sure if the band was called The Suburbs and their Album of the Year was called Arcade Fire. And call her old and out of touch if you’d like, but we all know it was Kris Kristofferson that looked like he had just arrived from a 5-day camp out in his car, fueled by nothing more than Tic Tacs and distilled washer fluid.

What’s even more hilarious than the easy picking senior sect were the immediate tweets from celebrities that pondered “Arcade who?” I’m sure there is a bunch of people under the age of 18 who are asking the same thing about Rosie O’Donnell and Tawny Kitaen.

I liked Cee Lo’s get up for “Fuck Forget You” as it reminded me of Captain Fantastic era Elton appearing on the Muppet Show. I had no idea why Gwyneth Paltrow was singing with him, and then I learned that she was in some country music movie. I was surprised at her singing ability, but then I remembered that she did some movie with Huey Lewis, which completely turned me off to her singing ability.

Speaking of singing ability isn’t it time for us to completely ignore Christina Aguilera by now. Seriously. Shut the fuck up.

Bob Dylan was awful, What else is new? Move on, people.

My wife thought that the band’s that came before Dylan were silly looking and over-excited. I said it was good television, and it would create some nice record sales for them. Sure enough, both Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers posted some nice sales gains because of their spirited performances.

I liked Lady Gaga’s egg thing, but my kids were bummed that Katy Perry didn’t win anything. “Fireworks” is a popular favorite around our house, causing my three-year-old to burst out in Elaine Bennis fashion and my son to stoop to silly levels in an attempt to snag some of the attention away from her.

They also like Justin Bieber, but apparently, the Grammy voters don’t. I think it’s hilarious that his fans took to Tweeting nesting things about Esperanza Spalding, with some girls going as far as to deface Spalding’s Wikipedia entry.

I thought Eminem rather sucked and I was utterly convinced that the Starland Vocal Ba…er….Lady Antioxidant would win everything. They seemed so nice, clean, and white-typically great barometers of Grammy voting. I had no idea about the song, but my wife sang every word of it. Go figure.

In closing, this year’s Grammy’s was everything I expected it to be-a predicable pat on the ass to those artists who still play by the rules and manage to eek out a few record sales. Seriously, the Lady A folks went out of their way to thank their label, their managers, and to “country radio” for playing their music, acting like this was 1990 when all of those things really mattered.

They don’t anymore, and neither does the Grammy’s. It’s an irrelevant event, reduced to a Sunday night showcase of mediocrity.

And while the world is abuzz on Arcade Fire’s curious case of sudden mainstream notoriety, the rest of the Grammy’s played like any other Grammy Awards show for the past half-century.