Music News, Reviews, and Gossip on Idolator.com » grammys2008

Public’s Interest In Music-Related Television Waning Almost As Quickly As Public’s Interest In Music

Maura — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:30:12 +0000

Not that the underlying thesis of this Ad Age story about the decline in ratings experienced by both the Grammys and American Idol should be a surprise to anyone–the piece cites the rise of music-related celebrities who are more famous for their personal lives than their songs and the “natural life cycle” of the now-seven-years-old Idol as two reasons for said shows’ crummy numbers–but in case you were wondering just how little of MTV and its formerly “all-about-the-music” sibling MTV2’s broadcast time was devoted to music videos these days, you now have an answer: “The cable nets have become cultural chameleons, with the original programming premise — music videos — now only comprising an average of 4.5% of MTV’s and 14% of MTV 2’s schedule, according to data supplied by the network.” [Advertising Age]

Maura — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:50:39 +0000

Mathew Knowles has responded to Aretha Franklin’s miffedness over his daughter calling Tina Turner “the Queen” during Sunday night’s Grammy ceremony. Quoth the dad of Beyonce: “As a manager I am not taking something this ridiculous to Beyonce. Beyonce referred to Tina Turner as a ‘queen,’ … not queen of gospel, queen of soul, queen of blues, Queen of England. I consider my wife a queen and sometimes call her that. Does Aretha have a problem with that?” Well, now that you mention it… [CelebTV.com]

Maura — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:20:22 +0000

Vince Gill on his “na na, I got a Grammy from a Beatle and you didn’t” dig at Kanye West during Sunday night’s Grammys: “He had said something about how he was gonna win Album of the Year later, and if not him, then Amy Winehouse was most deserving and not me or the Foo Fighters. So I decided to have a little fun. … I just saw him out of the corner of my eye when I was up there, and I decided I had to do it. He took a shot at Gretchen Wilson when he lost Best New Artist to her a few years ago, and so us rednecks stick together.” [MTV / Photo: AP]

Aretha Franklin More Annoyed With Grammy Writers Than We Are

Maura — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:53:00 +0000

Those of you watching the Grammy telecast on Sunday night may remember the middle-school-caliber speech Beyonce gave as an introduction to Tina Turner, where she ran down all the icons of the past who she wanted to be like before instructing the audience to get on their feet^* for Turner, who she referred to as “the Queen.” Well, Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin–lumped in as one of the “historical women” who didn’t quite measure up to Turner for whatever reason–was not happy with the slight, going so far as to issue a statement: “I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyoncé, however I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy. In addition to that, I thank the Grammys and the voting academy for my 20th Grammy and love to Beyoncé anyway.” I seriously doubt that anyone else saw Beyonce’s coronation of Turner as a “cheap shot” (I saw of it as yet another indication that the show’s writers were clearly scrambling for last minute material), but judge for yourself with the YouTube of the performance–and the cringeworthy text of Beyonce’s intro–after the jump.

“Sarah Vaughn, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan … historical women who have performed on this very stage. When I was a little girl I dreamed of being on this stage. But I knew I needed all the right elements. Like the beat of Donna Summer, the spirit of Mahalia Jackson, the jazz of Ella, or Nancy–band, gimme some! (”jazzy” bit of “Deja Vu” plays) Lena Horne, Anita Baker, Diana Ross, Gladys, Janet, and the beautiful melodies of Whitney. The legacy they have bestowed are simply irreplaceable.

“But there is one legend who has the essence of all of these things. The glamour. The soul. The passion.
The strength. The talent. Ladies and gentlemen, stand on your feet and give it up for the Queen.”

Aretha at Grammys: Not Feeling The R-E-S-P-E-C-T [People]
[Photo: AP]

^* B really likes instructing people to stand up–a Destiny’s Child show a few years back was marked by her telling us to “Get up for God.” Perhaps she was a second-grade teacher in a previous life?

Maura — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:50:58 +0000

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of using pilfered passes to sneak into the Grammy Awards on Sunday night. And just in case you were worried about the threat to national security posed by this bit of theft: “Police believe the motive for the theft was a desire to see celebrities, not terrorism.” Well, all right then! [Billboard.biz]

Grammy Producers Allowing Millions Of Americans Who Missed The Show To Catch Up Via YouTube

Maura — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:40:40 +0000

Perhaps chastened by the low ratings for Sunday’s telecast, the Grammy powers that be have allowed YouTube bootlegs of segments from the show to run wild, and right now the entire first page of the video-sharing site’s most popular music videos is made up of Grammy clips. (Click the image for a larger version of the top-12 screenshot; unsurprisingly, Universal Music Group artists Amy Winehouse and Kanye West are in there multiple times. But where’s Herbie Hancock?) In the grand scheme of YouTube, though, none of the Grammy clips are as popular right now as that one where the hockey player gets sliced in the neck, a fact that is no doubt causing the awards show’s producers to rethink next year’s centerpiece entertainment. [YouTube]

The Grammys’ Album Of The Year Upset: Who Should Have Won?

Maura — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:00:20 +0000

Judging by the reactions from my living room, my instant-messenger conversations, and the comments section on our Grammy liveblog, people were more than a little surprised when the Album Of The Year winner was announced… and said winner wasn’t Kanye West or Amy Winehouse, but Herbie Hancock, whose Joni Mitchell homage River: The Joni Letters took home the night’s final prize. I actually wasn’t too surprised by Hancock’s victory–to quote myself, “if you didn’t at least think that Herbie Hancock paying tribute to Joni Mitchell would sway at least half the people who voted for Steely Dan over Eminem a few years back you haven’t been paying attention”–but apparently a lot of people were! (Perhaps they forgot that Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae and Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen were also on the album.) So let’s put it to all of you: If you had a vote in the Grammy balloting, what would you have chosen as this Grammy year’s Album Of The Year? Poll after the jump.

[Photo: AP]

Kanye West’s Grammy Staredown

Maura — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:50:14 +0000

While accepting the award for Best Rap Album at last night’s Grammys, Kanye West gave a clinic in How To Make The Producers Stop Playing You Off When You Still Have About Half Of Your Acceptance Speech To Get Through. Of course, the fact that he was paying tribute to his deceased mother probably helped him win sympathy points from the showrunners, a fact that’s making me wonder just how many lengthy acceptance speeches at the upcoming Oscars are going to be puncutated by well-timed tributes to family members who passed away “recently.”

The Top Five Problems With Last Night’s Grammy Show (And A Few Possible Solutions)

Maura — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 08:00:01 +0000

The promise of seeing Tina Turner perform with Beyonce–and other generational boundaries get kicked in, or at least gently hip-checked–wasn’t as much of a turn-on for Joe Television Viewer as executives at CBS thought it would be: Numbers for this year’s Grammy telecast were off 12% from last year, and down an astonishing 18.82% among adults 18-49. (Well, OK, those numbers aren’t that astonishing given the corresponding drop in album sales this year. But still, not good!) So what happened? Was it the booking? Were the bus ads with just photos of Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl too subtle for potential viewers–and kind of embarrassing for the producers, since Macca wasn’t even at the telecast? Or is it just another example of music falling somewhere below ice hockey in terms of pastimes in which Americans are interested–and the music industry doing its damndest to keep its profile plummeting? After the jump, I count down the top five issues faced by last night’s telecast, from poor advertising to ill-advised demographic-chasing.

1. Can’t anyone around here advertise this thing? Between the chaos surrounding who was and wasn’t performing, the relative lack of TV spots, the user-generated “best Grammy moments” special that was relegated to the Friday-night wasteland, and “abstract” bus ads that tried to link Dave Grohl and Paul McCartney, the Grammys’ run-up seemed oddly anticlimactic–even though the National Academy Of Recording Arts and Sciences enlisted a big-bucks ad agency to get the word out about the ceremony’s 50th year. Clearly the agita over whether or not Amy Winehouse and Michael Jackson would be showing up threw a monkeywrench into the Grammys’ show-touting plans, but a show that has a big-agency ad budget should at least have some sort of Plan B as far as getting people who aren’t in the biz excited about tuning in.

2. In a time when the music industry is dying, the last thing anyone wants to see is dead people. This isn’t in reference to the montage of people who have passed away over the years–which had its own problems, like a bunch of glaring omissions (hello? Stockhausen?)–but to the show’s opener, which brought back Frank Sinatra from the dead for the dual purpose of giving the Grammys a showy “hook” and elevating Alicia Keys’ status. And the rest of the show followed suit, becoming a sort of grotesquerie that was paying homage to the days when albums actually went gold and platinum on a regular basis.

3. A note to whoever books your show next year: There are other bands that know how to play rock and roll besides Kid Rock and the Foo Fighters. And incredibly, some of them have members that are under 35! That was one of the more startling aspects of the evening; all the “young” performers were in R & B and hip-hop–aside from Josh Groban, who manages to be both old and young simultaneously–even though rock albums like Daughtry and, God help me, Nickelback’s All The Right Reasons have sold a lot more copies than Rihanna’s just-brushing-a-million-sold Good Girl Gone Bad. (And let’s not even get into will.i.am.) When you have John Fogerty as the torch-passee in a “history of rock” segment, something has gone horribly wrong on the demographic-calculation front.

4. Stop with the “bringing the fans into the show” contests. Both the My Grammy Moment contest and that People-sponsored sweepstakes that allowed some poor woman to serve as Spokesmodel For A Day made the show look even more desperate for people to have reasons to care about it. Not to mention that it makes the whole Olde Music Industry-glorifying aspects of the show even more insidious.

5. Tell Matthew Knowles where the sun can shine. This is going back to the whole “where were the rock performers under 35?” issue, but honestly–Solange gets stage time and you can’t even bring one youngish rock nominee on stage? And people wonder why the music industry is in trouble, part XXVIII.

And a bonus track: For an anticlimactic show, that ending sure was an anticlimax. After Herbie Hancock’s Album Of The Year win (still causing controversy, just in case you were wondering!), the New York CBS affiliate cut to about seven minutes of commercials–and then, all of a sudden, there were the credits, projected over a bunch of confetti falling while Cirque du Soleil members twirled around to Beatles songs. Which made me ask myself: Is David Foster Wallace getting side work with awards shows? A good closing number would have sent the broadcast out with a bang–and given the show a better parting hook than people scratching their heads over the fact that the “Rockit” guy was still alive.

Earlier: Idolator’s complete Grammy coverage
[Photo: Getty]

Maura — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:54:02 +0000

AP has the complete list of Grammy winners. Tia Carrere was robbed! [AP]