Next year the Grammys turn 50 and – like most other 50-year-olds – it rambles on for too long, becomes easily confused, often forgets what it was just about to do and has to get up several times in the night to go to the toilet.
And to mark the 50th anniversary of the Grammys, organisers are planning a spectacular celebration blowout to remind the world that when it comes to achingly serious music award shows that feature an impractically large number of categories, seem to have a running-time that stretches into weeks and are studded with long speeches from boring middle-aged men who seem determined to remind everyone that filesharing is bad, the Grammys is where it's at, baby.
It's fair to say that the Grammys are rubbish. Even when the Grammys try something exciting and new – like Madonna duetting with Gorillaz last year – you can't help but be reminded that you're basically watching an old lady in a leotard do a dance with a cartoon. And this year when The Police reunited for the Grammys… well, look, it's the bloody Police, how excited are you expecting us to get about that?
And those are the highlights of the Grammys. The actual bread and butter of the awards come when people like Mary J Blige and The Dixie Chicks win things – acts so achingly underwhelming that not even their own parents would be able to be able to muster more than half a resigned shrug at the news that they won a Grammy. And don't even get us started on Justin Timberlake whoring out Grammy duets like his life depended on it.
Despite all this, though, 2008 will see the Grammys turn 50 – and even though most people would rather spend an evening watching Heat Vision And Jack on YouTube than sit through all 92 hours of the Grammys, organisers are planning something special to mark the anniversary. Reuters reports:
The Grammy Awards, the music industry's most prestigious event, are getting an early start on next year's 50th anniversary with plans for a fashion line, coffee-table book, museum and TV specials, organizers said on Tuesday.
Yes, you read that right – by February you'll be able to watch additional television coverage of an awards show that nobody even watches anyway, buy a coffee table book about the history of a music industry circle-jerk that rewards commercial success over artistic endeavour, go to the Grammy museum where you'll presumably get to walk down a hall of all 50 winners of the Best Engineered Hawaiian Spoken Word Sleevenote category, and – finally – go out and buy clothes that actively advertise to people that you like the Grammys even though the fact you're balding, have a ponytail, wear loose-fitting suits with T-shirts under them and never take off your Rayban Wayfarers advertises that fact every single day of your life anyway.
We despair. We were hoping that the organisers of the Grammys would use the 50th anniversary to ditch what had gone before in order to strike a brave new path of modern-day reinvention, but instead it looks like it's self-indulgent nostalgia all the way.
Oh OK, we're just jealous that we still have to wait 20 years until The Brits has its 50th anniversary and launches its own clothing line. And when it does, we'll be first in the queue for a 'Joss Stone Is A Bell-End' T-shirt.
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