The 66th annual Grammys aired on Sunday, Feb. 4th in Los Angeles’s Crypto Arena. This year, Trevor Noah was the selected host. The Grammys sent out their nominations on Nov. 10, 2023, and then the Academy’s voting members picked the winners on national television. The Grammys are often met with a lot of criticism, especially in recent years. Some of the winners in each category included Taylor Swift winning Album of The Year with “Midnights”, Victoria Monet winning Best New Artist, and Miley Cyrus winning Record of The Year with her song “Flowers”. Some of the main criticism in this year’s Grammys was on the topic of Killer Mike’s “Michael” album winning over Travis Scott’s “Utopia” for Rap Album of The Year.
According to data about the Grammys’ viewership found on statistica.com, the Grammys has seen a sharp decline in viewership in the last 10 years, with the lowest number of viewers in 2021, during the pandemic.
Mr. Pohlman, a history teacher at Glen Rock High School, has been watching the Grammys since the late 80s and 90s, and he gave his insights on some of the changes throughout the Grammys, and his obsession with it when he was younger.
“The Grammys now seem to be more focused on the pop side of music. The [music] that is selling more. The [type of music] that will get what they call “the Grammy bump”, Pohlman stated.
Pohlman defines the Grammy bump as “Artist X wins album of the year, and what are people more likely to do? They are going to go out and download that person’s music or pick up that person’s album.”
In the 1980s and 90s, there was a shift from hair metal into the “grunge” era. Mr. Pohlman recalls a time during 1991 rooting for his favorite band Van Halen. A few years later Bruce Springsteen took the main stage of the Grammys, and Pohlman started to root for him.
While Mr. Pohlman rooted for Bruce Springsteen in the 1990s, it could be said that in the latest Grammys, a lot of people were looking forward to Taylor Swift winning Album of The Year with her latest album, and while the Grammys have made decisions based on what genre is popular and what seems to sell more. To Pohlman, it’s no surprise that the artists dominating the current landscape of music are favored in the Grammys and there is nothing wrong with that.
The Grammys have different awards for different categories in music, and even if some of our personal favorite artists aren’t lauded for their work by the Grammys, or if there was a “robbery”, the Grammy’s main mission of “recognizing outstanding achievements of the music industry” has still remained in the last 66 years.
