British people, it’s time to celebrate – the world’s smuggest, dreariest, most interminable music awards show likes our music!
Some of the nominations for next year’s Grammys have been announced, and British names like Robert Plant, Adele, Duffy, MIA and Radiohead are all over them. Now we’re not saying that this is because 2008 was a bad year for music, but Coldplay did get seven nominations, so we suppose in retrospect we are a bit.
And this is just the start – next year the rest of the Grammy nominations are announced, including Best Native American Music Album. Come on Coldplay! Make it eight!
You don’t need to be told that winning a Grammy is a sure sign that you’ve made it in the music industry, a sign up there alongside being chased through Japan by screaming schoolgirls and being forced to orally pleasure a sweaty middle-aged record executive for a contract.
So the Grammy nominations are a big deal. And when we say big, we mean big – so big that the actual task of even reading out all the nominees for all 110 categories has to be split up over two calender years because listening to them all in one go would probably inspire some kind of Jonestown-style mass suicide.
That’s why, yesterday, the Grammy nominations were announced, but only for the handful of categories that anyone actually cares about. And, although Lil’ Wayne led the pack with eight nominations and Jay-Z, Kanye West and Ne-Yo all managed to get six nods each, the list was surprisingly Brit-heavy.
Coldplay managed to score seven Grammy nominations, Radiohead got five, while Robert Plant was recognised for his album with Alison Krauss and comparatively new girls like Duffy, Leona Lewis, Adele and MIA all got nods too. But why so many British artists? Reuters thinks it knows why:
“They’re doing great work,” said producer Jimmy Jam, a top Grammy official. He suggested this year’s crop of British newcomers benefited from a “trickle down” from the likes of trouble-prone London neo-soul singer Amy Winehouse, who won the record, song and best new artist Grammys this year.
He’s right. After her slightly unbelievable Grammy wins last year, Amy Winehouse is still big news – but because she’s too busy trying to complete her transformation into Feeble Mumm-Ra at the moment, she’s not eligible for any awards.
In fact, it’s not hard to see that the British acts that were nominated for Grammys yesterday were only chosen because together they make a kind of composite Amy Winehouse – Leona Lewis has the broad appeal of Amy, Adele has the voice, Duffy has the vintage sound, MIA shares Amy’s love of multiculturalism, Radiohead have Amy Winehouse’s funny-looking eyes and Robert Plant has her genuinely awful hair. And what do Coldplay share with Amy Winehouse? The fact that if we hear either of their names spoken again today we’re going to hurl ourselves out of the arseing window.
But let’s not get too excited, Britain – these are just the Grammy nominations. Nobody’s guaranteed to win anything. Fingers crossed that Coldplay pick up a couple of trophies at least, though – because if their next album is going to be the ‘boo hoo Gwyneth Paltrow left me‘ album that everyone’s expecting, they probably shouldn’t worry about saving any more shelf-space.