As usual, my favorite music of the year has very little in common with the Grammy nominations. The only Album Of The Year nomination I even like is “Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King”. I don’t like any of the choices for Record or Song of the year.
Here are my favorite albums of the year:
- Fanfarlo – Reservoir They’re my favorite new group of 2009. Their sound is reminiscent of Arcade Fire, but not as powerful & epic.
- Wilco – Wilco (the album)
- Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
- Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
- The Decemberists – Hazards of love
- Imogen Heap – Elipse She’s simply amazing.
- Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
- Tinariwen – Imidwan (Companions) I can’t get enough of their Desert Blues sound.
- Baaba Maal – Television Very interesting collaborations with Western artists.
- Ashley Maher – Amina Bringing Senegalese sounds to mainstream pop.
Honorable Mention: Dark Was The Night (various artists) – a compilation album featuring new songs by Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, and Spoon, among many others.
And my favorite songs:
- You Never Know – Wilco
- Brother Sport – Animal Collective
- Luna – Fanfarlo
- Lenin – Arcade Fire
- The Wanting Comes in Waves – The Decemberists
- 1901 – Phoenix
- Earth – Imogen Heap
- Why I Am – Dave Matthews Band
- Horchata – Vampire Weekend
- (I Keep On) Rising Up – Mike Doughty
Next year, I’m really looking forward to the new albums by Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Vampire Weekend, and Jonsi’s solo album.
The Grammy awards always pick the same kind of bland, mainstream pop music and shy away from anything different or innovative.
Some of their category selections are bizarre, like nominating “Wilco (the album)” under Americana rather than a more mainstream pop or rock category. Other categories like “Alternative” & “World Music” are dumping grounds for artists with very little in common, while the dozen or so Latin categories are overly specific.
The big category nominations are always “artists” with big labels promoting them. The worst thing about people like Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and the others is there’s no innovation and nothing personal in their music. It’s more about fashion, costumes, and carefully choreographed dance moves than the music itself, and their whole image is designed and packaged by their manager and record company, not by the artists themselves. When they play a live show, everything is carefully scored & choreographed to look & sound exactly like their albums & music videos, with nothing spontaneous.
With bands like Arcade Fire, Dave Matthews Band, Wilco and others, their shows are completely spontaneous and they never play a song the same way twice. Their live recordings are collector’s items and fans have favorite shows or performances because each one is unique. I can’t see anyone collecting Lady Gaga live recordings because they’ll always be exactly the same.
i agree.award shows are starting to suck and i cant stand watching them anymore. its a waste of time. they nominate the same people, even if they didn't come out wit nuthing that year. the same people win. its like they dont care anymore. the grammy's be looking so messy.they use to look elegent and organized, but they just all over the place. they need to nominate people wit good and meaningful songs. songs people can relate to like:mary j. blige,mariah carey,and so on.but you dont find good music like you use too. michael jackson,diana ross,stevie wonder, and etc. all had great music and thats the music i luv cuz you can relate to it and its real down to earth good music. unlike the dumb stuff they play on the radion now a days. even though im only 17 i kno good music wen i hear it. and its not mthe music i hear today. i mean todays generation like:ciara, justin timberlake, usher, and etc. i like them cuz they inspiration is michael jackson. but most people today are killing music cuz they gettin played out and overrated and their loosing the meaning of rel good music. the award shows dont see wat good music and artists are out their. im feed up wit listening to the music thats why i burn my fave songs on cd's and i dont like watching awards sows anymore, i just have it on that channel if nuthing else is on.
I so agree with everything the both of you said everybody thinks that Lady Gaga, Beyonce are the best artist we have in this generation how? Their not even original Lady Gaga is just a duplicate of Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and Michael Jackson, Beyonce is just a duplicate of Tina Turner, and Diana Ross. It's sad that some of the people around my age think that these are the best artist we have sure Beyonce and Lady Gaga can sing, but their music lacks meaning it's not just about being able to sing and put on a show look at Michael, Janet, Mariah, Whitney, Prince, Stevie Wonder, James brown they can sing and put on good shows, but their music also has meaning they made you think with their music you can relate to them they even made you cry!!!! They were also original, artistic, and creative. Lady Gaga is creative, but she lacks originality, Beyonce lacks originality and creativeness, I mean the whole Single Ladies dance routine was not even hers she got that from Fosse, but yet she's getting more attention for it!!! You want to know the funny thing about that song it only did good because of the video a lot of people didn’t even like that song until they saw the video!!!!Now you got everybody dancing in leotards doing that stupid dance so wack!!! And now everybody is talking about a guy needs to put a ring on their finger please females should have been telling their men to put rings on their fingers anyway!!! Why did Beyonce have to come out with that song for females to realize that!!!! I just don’t get the hype with some of today’s artist they will NEVER be greater then the artist of our parent’s generation NEVER!!!