A Grammys for millennials
HERE’S a quick refresher on how the Grammy Awards work, or don’t: The Recording Academy invites its overwhelmed music biz electorate to cast votes for excellence in as many as 19 of 80-odd categories, and once the ballots are counted, they stage a ratings-hungry awards telecast during which young nominees are required to duet with more recognisable veterans, forging a superficial trans-generational continuity that honours the past on a night ostensibly designed to celebrate the present.
In recent years, the most nourishing Grammy-season debates have centred on how the Recording Academy disperses prestige between races and across generations.
While Beyoncé and Adele are distinct artists, it’s worth noting that they – along with the other three nominated for album of the year, Justin Bieber, Drake and country outsider Sturgill Simpson – are pre-middleaged. This is something.
Roughly a decade ago, the Grammys had developed an affinity for retroactively decorating artists well past their creative primes. Herbie Hancock won album of the year in 2008. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss took it in 2009.
This year’s Grammys slate, however, shows some vital signs in skewing young. In the four main genre-blind categories, every artist nominated is under the age of 40. This shift counts as progress in Grammyland.
Still, it’s hard to shake the feel- ing that this year’s voters are listening to young music through old ears. That’s because four songs nominated for the night’s biggest trophies – Lukas Graham’s 7 Years, Mike Posner’s I Took a Pill in Ibiza, Twenty One Pilots’ Stressed Out, and Justin Bieber’s Love Yourself – each seem to reinforce some of the most tedious stereotypes about millennials. These songs feel self-absorbed, superficial, entitled, whiny. Let us discuss them now and never again. Lukas Graham, 7 Years
Lukas Forchhammer is the frontman of this almost-eponymous Danish pop group, whose 7 Years is up for record and song of the year. It’s an oversung coming-of-age story in which Forch- hammer runs hot-and-cold on his own dreams. “Something about that glory only seemed to bore me,” he declares one moment, then “I don’t believe in failure” the next. If the man’s ambition is confused, his singing is not. Nearly every syllable feels showy, pungent with urgency and overconfidence. Mike Posner, I Took a Pill in Ibiza
Nominated for song of the year, this guy-with-guitar ballad opens with some charming self-deprecation, (“I took a pill in Ibiza to show Avicii” – the superstar DJ – “I was cool”), but when the chorus attempts to elevate Posner to anti-hero status, (“You don’t wanna be high like me, never really knowing why like me”), the pathos feels unearned. Funny how the excessive self-pity washes away on Seeb’s dance remix of the song, which generated more compassion – and more airplay – for Posner than the original unplugged rendition. Twenty One Out
“Out of student loans and tree house homes we all would take the latter,” puns singer Tyler Joseph halfway through Twenty One Pilots’ breakout single. It’s a line so bad, it should stress us all out. Everything about this rock-rap-reggae hybrid sounds as if it was written by an algorithm, especially the lyrics, which pine for a full retreat to childhood. Pilots, Stressed Justin Bieber, Love Yourself
OK, let’s give credit where credit is due. There’s a poison dart in this tune, and it goes like this: “My mama don’t like you, and she likes everyone”. Yowee. Has a pop star ever weaponised their own mother as ruthlessly as Bieber does in this refrain? Nominated for song of the year, Love Yourself is emblematic of Bieber’s uncanny knack for getting it right and wrong in the same stroke. It’s an expertly sung kiss-off where Bieber claims to have been initially blind to his girl’s wrongdoings because, “I’ve been so caught up in my job”.
Individually, these songs are little more than pesky melodic irritants, but together, they seem to be burnishing a new aesthetic of millennial white-boy melancholy – a sound that has clearly resonated with the membership of the Recording Academy.
All these young dudes still have things to learn about how their songs are sung. Self-pity won’t float a ballad if the vocalist doesn’t sound genuinely wounded. Self-absorption is more magnetic when it’s scandalising than when it’s austere.
And it’s important to remember that there are still armies of young maestros forging ambitious, self-aware music out of hope, fury, freedom and desire. Some are competing for best new artist on Sunday night (Chance the Rapper, Maren Morris), some will compete for lesser prizes, (Lil Yachty, Gallant).
This morning, the winners won’t necessarily be the ones holding the trophies.