I was also a bit taken aback by the near unanimity of the critics. Especially in light of the fact that 4 out of 5 gave Graduation their “should win” votes as well as their “will win” votes. (For those who haven’t seen the graphic, one critic gave Herbie Hancock her “should win” vote.)

Also, did you catch how out-of-touch these critics are with USAT’s readers? The readers’ poll went: 1) Vince Gill (!); 2) Foo Fighters; 3) Amy Winehouse; 4) Kanye West; and 5) Herbie Hancock. I guess the America’s-interstate-rest-stop-diner-patrons vote overwhelmed the America’s-business-travelers vote in this poll.

I’ll flesh this out on my own blog on Saturday, but I’ve been contrarian on the whole “Amy’s such a mess Grammy doesn’t want to ‘enable’ her thing”. I think she’s gonna sweep. My two basic supporting points:

1) Her nominations are almost completely interlocking. With the possible exception of ROTY and SOTY, how can she not be considered the overwhelming favorite in each category? And every voter who thinks Back To Black is the AOTY has to give her BNA, and one or two more, at least.

2) Grammy has been falling all over itself to make sure Amy’s involved on Sunday nite. They plan to have her perform in a studio in London and “accept her awards via satellite”. Ahem.

Someone behind the scenes obviously knows what the results are, but I think Grammy smells history on Sunday nite. And heaven knows the music industry could use some big positive press right about now.

Here’s your leading indicator — “Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical”. If this award, which will go out in the early ceremony (methinks?), goes to Mark Ronson, it’s gonna be a big nite for Amy Winehouse.

Yeah, yeah, I know the core theory: “It sold a lot, and Grammy likes big sellers,” but in the album category, that’s kind of bullshit — they like big sellers that make them comfortable, of the Celine Dion-Sheryl Crow-Natalie Cole-Ray Charles variety. Hip-hop albums generally don’t rally the voters. Even Lauryn Hill’s and OutKast’s wins over the last decade are explainable by their catchy, mostly-sung-and-not-rapped big hits.

I’ll throw this open to the Idolator peanut gallery: Is Kanye a shoo-in? Make no mistake, I’d be happy for him (even over Winehouse; I ranked Graduation over Back to Black on my Idolator poll). But I just don’t see how the Recording Academy won’t find a way to screw him over again.

After I saw this piece online this morning, I queued up the tracks released as part of the “deluxe” re-release of Back To Black recently. If you haven’t heard those, I would suggest you check out Amy’s version of “Cupid”. Sam Cooke would’ve been very proud.