While a regular Grammys post is coming later today (even though I haven’t really cared about the Grammys since 1996…or like 1999 when Santana and Rob Thomas won all those awards for ‘Smooth’), I’d first like to talk about Frank Ocean’s Grammy and Taylor Swift diss.
Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed albums of 2016, so I’m sure a few people thought it was odd that it wasn’t nominated for a single Grammy. However, it’s less odd when you find out that Frank removed his album from Grammy consideration. Why, you ask? Well, kinda because of Taylor Swift.
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich and wrier David Wild kind of took a shot at Frank for removing his album from consideration, assuming he did so because of his notably bad and technical-difficulties rattled performance at the 2013 show. They said:
We executed his vision knowing that it was faulty. And we tried to tell him that, we tried to tell his management that, we tried to tell the record label that. So, his feelings about the Grammys right now, I would imagine, probably go back to that in one way.
However, Frank was quick to jump on Tumblr and reveal his real disdain for the Grammys doesn’t stem from one bad performance, but rather what the Grammys represent as a whole:
Winning a TV award doesn’t christen me successful. Yea yea my 2013 performance at the Grammys was absolute shit. Technical difficulties, blah blah. Fuck that performance though. You think that’s what kept my work out of the Grammt process this year? Don’t you think I would’ve wanted to play the show to ‘redeem’ myself if I felt that way? I’ve actually been tuning into CBS around this time of year for a while to see who gets the top honour and you know what’s really not ‘great TV’ guys? ‘1989’ getting album of the year over To Pimp A Butterfly. Hands down one of the most ‘faulty’ TV moments I’ve seen. Believe the people. Believe the ones who’d rather watch select performances from your program on YouTube the day after because your show puts them to sleep.
I really don’t disagree with him. For the most part, the Grammys doesn’t reward much ground-breaking music, it rewards what’s popular on the extremely mainstream top 40 countdowns you hear every Sunday on the radio. The Grammys stopped appealing to me when I was about 12 and actually got really into music. The Grammys is basically for pre-teens and women over 40 who liked top 40 radio.
That being said, I really don’t know what my favourite thing about the whole Frank Ocean statement was: the fact that he called down Taylor Swift for winning Best Album, or the fact that Solange shared his statement while her and Beyoncé were probably getting ready for the Grammys where they both won awards. SMDH Solange, smdh.