2012 Grammy nominations

"Revelator" is a word that I only hear in the context of blues-rock albums

Seeing how the Grammys have always been about the most units moved, the Bon Iver nom is particularly bizarre (or has he sold more than I realize?)

― Darin, Tuesday, December 6, 2011 1:50 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

yeah, he has, the album debuted at #2 on the U.S. charts

i mean obv he hasn't sold as much as the other noms in those categories but there was enough of a combination of sales and acclaim to plausibly get him in the running

whoa... I had no idea. I'm hopelessly out of the loop it seems.

Honest question here since I don't keep up a lot of those of genres you are mentioning, but did they used to be better at covering them? Otherwise I don't really understand being bothered by anything the Grammys do in 2011.

― I left my login in El Sandboxo, Monday, December 5, 2011 6:01 PM

They are just screwing it up in a different way. The problem with the Grammys I think is that to vote you have to be a paying member, and for years they didn't have many of these regional traditional music genres and then they added them. But not enough musicians from those genres joined the Grammys organization to vote, so the same folks were winning every year. The Grammys just got rid of the separate latin-jazz category and the zydeco & Cajun one and others and they proclaimed there were not enough artists to fill these categories. That is wrong, there were just not enough artists in those genres who cared about the Grammys to join as members. So now you get 1 token zydeco act competing against 1 token New Orleans brass band, 1 polka act, etc. The Latin-jazz folks have to compete against the the Latin pop or tropical salsa acts or hope they can get attention in the separate Latin Grammys event that's broadcast on Spanish language tv

I'm not sure I've heard a note of Bon Iver, but a NY Times Mag feature profile is usually indicative of something.

And Arcade Fire won big last year

I remember reading that the Grammys now have some kind of select nominating committee that has the power to override nominations in the interest of diversity or quality control. I figured Bon Iver might've sneaked in that way.

I read some speculation that some of this year's nominees were kind of an industry strikes back effort based on those industry people not being happy with Esperanza Spaulding taking best new artist and Arcade Fire winning a few categories last year.