Grammys Album of the Year

AJ Vogt
Feb 21, 2016
3 min read

The Grammys, a yearly award show for musicians. Every year there is always some controversy to who won, who lost, and whose performance was amazing and whose fell a little short. This year, probably the most controversial outcome was that Taylor Swift won Album of the Year for "1989" and many people felt that Kendrick Lamar, who is a Hip Hop artist, should have won for his album "To Pimp a Butterfly." So now, many people are asking why? What determines a winner, is it true art, is it album success with sells or a combination of the both? Well, lets check it out.

First, I think it would help to understand how the winners of each Grammy are chose. According to the Grammys website, the process begins with members and recording studios submitting nominations. Then screening beings, with over 150 people going over all of the nominations and organizing them into categories and genres. The screening process does not make any artistic or technical judgements. Then starts the first rounds of voting, in which ballots are sent to members who pay their dues. In the final round, Recording Academy members vote in categories that include Album of the Year. Then the ballots are tallied. From that process, there is no indication of how the "members" vote.

It is without doubt that Taylor Swift's "1989" was extremely successful in the market. The album debuted number 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and sold over 1.2 million copies in the first week. "1989" became the best selling album of 2014. The album also had many number 1 singles including "Blank Space," "Shake it Off," and "Bad Blood." For these reasons, is this why Taylor won? Does she have a larger fan base?

Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly" was also in the running for Album of the Year. Lamar's album was praised for its musical scope as well as cultural relevance, which most of his competition did not have. Or at least in the way Kendrick did. The album debuted on the top of the U.S. Billobard 200. Lamar's album did win Best Bap Album at the Grammys this year and even went home with a couple other Grammys, but not Album of the Year.

Everything from the name of the album to the lyrics were important to Lamar. (Not to say they were not also extremely important to swift) Lamar described his album as "honest, fearful, and unapologetic." Something I do not think can be saidby Swift for her album. But so many people are so quick to put Taylor Swift down, yet she has had so much success with albums, singles, tours, pretty much every aspect of her career. So why all the controversy?

It is really tough to say how each Grammy is awarded. I do not think that these awards parallel how we, as a society, view the music industry. I think that it is so wrong to lump the views of all music genres into one view. Every genre is unique in its own way, and cannot be molded into another genre with a different societal view. That is why there are separate genres in the first place. Do I think Taylor Swift rightfully earned the reward? Yes. Do I think that true art is being discounted? Yes. Unfortunately this is a double edged sword, that has no clear solution. It is too tough for me to say that someone else deserved to win Album of the Year over Taylor Swift, but there are positives for Lamar and that is that he walked away with five Grammys, four specifcally for his album.

Check out the album on Youtube below: