On Sunday, the Grammy Awards’ biggest honor of 2017 will go to one of five artists: Adele, Beyonce, Drake, Justin Bieber or, er, country maverick Sturgill Simpson, a mostly A-list collection of competitors for the annual music industry approbation.
On paper, it’s a tough race. But it’s let be honest: there are really only two contenders here.
Drake’s “Views” is out of contention because the Grammy Awards don’t give Album of the Year to rap albums. Kendrick Lamar has lost twice in the last three years, Kanye West has been a three-time nominee in the category with no trophies, and such a release hasn’t taken top honors since OutKast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” in 2004–and that was a victory for an album that went on to sell an undeniable 11 million copies.
Despite a recent streak of alternative and indie rock winners–Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons and Beck–Simpson and his “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth” remains below those artists in both notoriety and prestige. He’s closer to Chris Stapleton, who didn’t make the winner’s circle in 2015, so he’s out, too.
As for Justin Bieber: “Purpose” is the pop star’s most focused collection, and his inclusion should be balm to fans who still remember the sting of his Best New Artist loss to Portland’s own Esperanza Spalding and the Grammy snubs that followed with 2012’s “Believe.” But beyond its catchy singles, “Purpose” is missing the core that puts it over the top: he should be honored just to be nominated. Let’s get to the real match-up.
Adele with her many Grammy Awards at the 2012 ceremony on Feb. 12, 2012 at Staples Center on Los Angeles, California. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Adele – “25”
Why she’ll win:
“25” was the first album in SoundScan-era history–running since 1991, three years younger than Adele herself–to crack the 3 million copies in one week ceiling. The closest predecessor was the 2.4 million record of *NSYNC’s “No Strings Attached,” a 2000 album released at the industry’s Millennial profit peak, a time when albums routinely had platinum opening weeks just before sales fell off the digital cliff in the wake of Napster. An Adele-level artist that year might’ve reached–who knows? Five million? 10? As is, she sold 7.4 million copies of “25” in the last two months of 2015, enough to make up 3 percent of all U.S. album sales for the entire year. The Grammys are an industry award: Adele’s history-making chart power alone might be a knockout punch.
Grammy history:
Adele already has one Album of the Year, for “25” prequel “21.” She walked away with a total of six trophies that year: she has 10 overall, putting her a third of the way toward late conductor Sir Georg Solti’s record 31. Grammy voters have gone out of their way to get Adele to the ceremony, nominating her in off-years 2013 and 2014 for a a live recording of “Set Fire to the Rain” and James Bond theme song “Skyfall,” respectively.
She’s given the ceremony its share of must-watch moments, including a 2012 comeback performance–her first after a a vocal cord surgery. A win in 2017 would be another one, making her the second woman ever to notch two Album of the Year trophies, following Taylor Swift’s accomplishment just last year. I’d guess “25,” released a few weeks too late for the Grammy’s 2016 consideration window, could’ve beaten “1989”: as much as the Grammys like Swift, Adele might be an even bigger favorite.
Why she’ll lose:
Everything else aside, “25” is a bit dull: “Hello” is a monster single, but the rest of the album is less memorable. Pleasant and accomplished as they are, these songs weren’t the kind to start conversations or leave a mark: can you remember a single line from, oh, “Water Under the Bridge” or “Sweetest Devotion”? Did “When We Were Young” start any memes of Adele bashing in car windows with a baseball bat? Not that sticking to the middle of the road has ever stopped a release from winning a Grammy before: that’s the voters’ favorite lane.
But if it’s acclaim they’re looking for, that brings us to “Lemonade.”
Beyonce shows off her trophies at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, on Feb. 8, 2015. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Imag
Beyonce – “Lemonade”
Why she’ll win:
If Adele is the queen of the charts, Beyonce Knowles-Carter is the master of attention. She teased “Lemonade” with the thunderclap of the “Formation” video and its politically charged Super Bowl performance in the same week, conquering the conversation even as she left the project’s personal drama for the album release itself. When she dropped “Lemonade,” it came with an HBO takeover that expanded the music into an Emmy-nominated visual journey that brought together Serena Williams’ dance moves and the searing writing of Somali-British poet Warsan Shire.
And though it’s Adele who has the reputation for baring her heart, “Lemonade” is the most vulnerable art Beyonce has ever made–the story of a relationship breaking and reforming, stronger where it cracked. And that’s only part of the thousand-thread tapestry of family, history and identity that Beyonce weaves, from R&B to rock to country, Texas to New Orleans, across the album’s music, lyrics and visuals. All that, and “Formation” still bumps.
Grammy history:
This is Beyonce’s third Album of the Year nomination, and she leads this year’s ceremony with nine nominations overall. The singer puts Adele’s Grammy career to shame: Beyonce is actually the most-nominated woman in Grammy history, with 62 total: as the New York Times pointed out, if she picks up eight of this year’s nine categories, she’ll pass Alison Krauss as the ceremony’s winningest woman, and be just a handful away from the overall record of 31, held by the late conductor Sir George Solti.
Why she’ll lose:
What could hurt “Lemonade” is that too few people heard it. The album was and remains an exclusive for streaming service TIDAL, a show of loyalty to husband and business owner Jay Z–Bey has her own stake in the company, but other key TIDAL artists, from Rihanna to Kanye West, allowed their albums to join the rest of the music consumption ecosystem not long after a TIDAL-only release window. (Exclusives elsewhere, such as Apple Music’s deals with Drake, Frank Ocean and Chance the Rapper, followed the same expansion plan). To be fair, it took seven months for Adele to release “25” to streaming services: up until June 2016, listeners had to actually buy it, and they did. But “25” still became available across platforms for a healthy chunk of the Grammy nomination window, while “Lemonade” remains in its lonely, CD-quality tower.
And there’s also the more obvious answer: the Grammy voter demographic and process has often kept it out of touch with the music that’s moving culture right now–music made by black artists such as Lamar, Beyonce or West, who made the case for Bey (and against the Grammys) when Beck’s folk-rock album “Morning Phase” won over “Beyonce” in 2015.
“When you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration and we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day and they listen to that Beyonce album and they feel like it takes them to another place,” West said. As I argued then, he wasn’t wrong, though Beck’s career has award merit of its own. The critique didn’t just come from the outspoken rapper: even the rock torch bearers at Rolling Stone ran an article wondering “Do the Grammys have a race problem?”.
Grammy boss and National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences president Neil Portnow said they’re working to counter that legacy in a 2016 interview.
“There was a time when the membership of the academy may have skewed a little older,” Portnow told the New York Times. “But as we have evolved and the community of membership has broadened, you probably see some reflection of that in how the nominations come out.”
Is that a “probably” or a “definitely”? Because “Lemonade” should definitely win this award.
Who’s the champ?
After this 12-round debate, “Lemonade” is the album we’ll remember in 20 years and the one we’re still talking about right now. As she should have in 2015, Beyonce ought to win. But Grammys gonna Grammy: it’s going to be Adele.
The Grammy Awards air Sunday, Feb. 12, at 5 p.m. PST. Tune in to find out for sure.
— David Greenwald
dgreenwald@oregonian.com
503-294-7625; @davidegreenwald
Instagram: Oregonianmusic
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