GRAMMY SHOCKERS
Big names don’t always win
There was little doubt who should take home the albumof-the-year Grammy in 1984. That was Michael Jackson with a little record called Thriller. He won, but the Recording Academy hasn’t always been seen to make the right call over its 60 years.
STAR CROSSED
The winner of album-of-theyear honour in 1981 wasn’t Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra or Pink Floyd. The winner was soft-rocker Christopher Cross, whose self-titled album contained the hit Sailing. Streisand’s album Guilty gave us Woman in Love, the Joel record Glass Houses yielded You May Be Right, Don’t Ask Me Why and It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me, the Sinatra album Trilogy: Past, Present, Future contained his classic version of New York, New York and the double-LP The Wall is considered by Rolling Stone magazine to be among the top 100 greatest albums of all time. Cross actually won four Grammys that year and called it “a dream come true.”
BEATLES BEATEN?
Glen Campbell’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix won album of the year honours in 1969. The record beat out Jose Feliciano’s acoustic covers in Felicano! and Richard Harris’s A Tramp Shining (which had the massive hit MacArthur Park), but it also bested two rather fine projects: Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends — with the songs America and Mrs. Robinson — and the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, with the songs I Am the Walrus, Penny Lane, All You Need Is Love and Strawberry Fields Forever. Rolling Stone named Bookends in its list of 500 greatest albums of all time and Magical Mystery Tour sold more than six million copies in the U.S. alone.
BEATEN AGAIN?
Sure, the jazz-rock band’s selftitled album had the classic tune Spinning Wheel, but was Blood, Sweat & Tears really a better album than Crosby, Stills and Nash, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, The Age of Aquarius or Abbey Road? In 1970, it apparently was.
A BITTER TASTE
In 1979, A Taste of Honey, the one-hit band that gave the world Boogie Oogie Oogie, beat out: Elvis Costello, The Cars, Toto and Chris Rea. Meanwhile, Costello would blossom into a fine songwriter, The Cars influenced scores of artists, and Toto are still blessing the rains down in Africa.
LUCKY MR. RICHIE
Voters in 1985 had one of the toughest tasks in Grammy history to anoint album of the year. There were four modern masterpieces: She’s So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper, Private Dancer by Tina Turner, Can’t Slow Down by Lionel Richie, Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen and Purple Rain by Prince. Lauper’s album gave us Girls Just Want to Have Fun and She Bop, Turner had What’s Love Got to Do with It and Let’s Stay Together, and Springsteen and Prince had career-defining LPs that gave us Glory Days and When Doves Cry, among others. Richie took the honour with an album fuelled by bona fide hits — Hello, All Night Long (All Night), Running With the Night and Stuck on You.
WAIT, WHAT?
Not all dubious choices were made long ago. One recent decision the Grammys might want to do-over was in 2014 when Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won best new artist honours. The pair behind Thrift Shop managed to beat out Ed Sheeran, James Blake, Kacey Musgraves and Kendrick Lamar. Macklemore & Lewis beat Lamar for best rap album; even Macklemore acknowledged Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city was better.
WRONG METAL
The Grammys introduced the brand new category of best hard rock/heavy metal recording in 1989. Metallica was nominated — and a favourite — for ... And Justice For All. It was up against AC/DC (Blow Up Your Video), Iggy Pop (Cold Metal) and Jane’s Addiction (Nothing Shocking). But the award went to the folksy, flute-y Jethro Tull, whose Crest of a Knave was not a heavy metal record. The stunned response by award presenters Alice Cooper and Lita Ford was perfection. Cooper told crowd he wasn’t punking them.
OUT OF LEFT FIELD
In 2008, the album-of-the-year award didn’t go to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black or to the Foo Fighters’ Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, Vince Gill’s These Days or even Kanye West’s mega-successful Graduation. It went to Herbie Hancock’s album of Joni Mitchell covers, River: The Joni Letters, the first jazz album to win the album award in more than 50 years and the only title in Grammy history to win album of the year before it cracked the Billboard 100. West and Winehouse left the Grammys with awards — but not the big one.