They're calling them Grammy's Big Three, they being the press. And it's warranted, they are the biggest selling artists of the year, Gaga's currently the biggest tour on the road, Beyonce made bank all over the world last year and Taylor Swift is the fair-haired girl of crossover country pop.
And I enjoy all of them. But lets be frank about their talents ... Taylor's the prodigy, Beyonce is the performer and Gaga is the visionary.
Visionaries don't often get the praise they truly deserve until after their prime, which makes the Lady Gaga explosion even more remarkable. But I don't think she take home a lot of hardware tonight nor do I think she cares to be competing for awards. But it IS a business and Grammys mean sales and sales mean opportunities to affect the zeitgeist and that's what I really think Gaga is after.
This isn't the first major music award show since the MTV Awards (we've had the American Music Awards since), but Taylor still has plenty of shine, ironically from the attempt to tarnish her (fucking Kanye, who btw is very close with both of the young Ms. Swift's rivals here).
Beyonce is, for better or worse, an industry. That, frankly, harshes my enjoyment of her. Where Taylor feels like a Cinderella story and Gaga feels like a political movement, Beyonce feels like a multinational corporation hellbent on domination.
Dan DeLuca, Music Critic for the Philly Inquirer, has his own take on the three:
Whichever of the Big Three women takes home the most golden gramophones will be deserving and will have achieved a sort of ubiquity, making personalized pop music that sold in the millions. In picking Swift, Beyoncé, and Gaga as their three faces of music, the Recording Academy has ensured that while two of the women might end up disappointed at the end of the evening, the Grammys can't lose.
Indeed. Should be a great show. Still thinking about what Gaga might do.
See their Record of the Year nominees from these women, Poker Face, You Belong With Me and Halo, by clicking the respective song titles in this sentence.
Oh, there are other nominees in that category, too. Kings of Leon and The Black Eyed Peas, but I couldn't pick that Kings of Leon song out of a lineup and ... I'm sorry, but I'm just as tired of The Black Eyed Peas as I am Republican obstructionism in the House and Senate.
Nothing personal, but can't they go away for a little while and then come back when I've recovered from the overkill? You're all very nice people, Black Eyed Peas, but don't we all need just a little break from all the Boom Boom Pow?
It showed how bad rock n roll has sunk or is it over. The Grammys are all about pop divas, hip hop and bad country. and if your doing a 3D tribute to Michael Jackson don't all it did was looked blurry to us without 3D galsses.
Posted by: Greg Mosorjak | February 01, 2010 at 06:30 PM