Of all of the different awards given out for movies, tv shows, and other media, the Grammys are the worst. This article was supposed to be written as a Grammy preview, but after surveying students, and watching other people get riled up about the Grammys, this article turned into an opinion piece. 

I listen to an average to slightly above-average amount of music. I listened to 23,770 minutes of music last year, which converts to slightly under 17 24-hour days. As I scrolled through the Grammy nominations to learn more about songs and artists that had been nominated for awards, I became more and more frustrated with the fact that I knew so few of these songs and artists, and that there were hardly any new artists that had been nominated for all of the different awards. 

It is the same artists every year with the same sounding music up for the same awards. Beyonce’s new album is up again this year, and lots of analysts indicate that she will win. Beyonce has won 28 different Grammy awards and has received 68 various Grammy nominations. The top song on her nominated album RENAISSANCE has 354,000,000 streams as of Wednesday, February first, and that song, as well as the album, has received a Grammy nomination. 

Breakout artist of 2022 JVKE released the song “golden hour” which promptly went viral on TikTok, and as of Wednesday, February first, it has over 365,000,000 plays but did not receive a Grammy nomination, as an artist, album, or single. After surveying high school students in a handful of my classes, almost everybody knew “golden hour,” and a little fewer than a quarter weren’t even aware that Beyonce released a new album. 

This is one small example among countless others artists in the industry that are underrepresented just because they aren’t big names like Beyonce. The mission statement of the Recording Academy is as follows: “To be the holistic content provider with artistic creativity, innovation, and the invention of Music, Films, News, Entertainment, Commercial Media, and Artists.” The recording academy has over 30,000 voting members, and they have to be recommended by a member of the recording academy, as well as an outside recommendation who is respected in the industry.

This has caused some serious collusion with the Grammy nominations, making it a large ‘exclusive’ club. Aging voters have caused the same artists to win Grammy awards every year, even when other artists have released better music. I understand that music taste is objective, but many other things should be considered: streams, social media popularity, and radio plays, just to name a few so that some new artists can win instead of the same artists releasing songs that sound the same and winning Grammys over and over again.