Hold the surprises
With Adele expected to sweep the Grammys, don’t expect wild cards this year,
Mere seconds after the Grammy trophy for Best Album had begun to warm in the Arcade Fire’s arms last year, the Internet was alive with bafflement.
In defiance of the media’s assumption that the popularity of the Arcade Fire’s 2010 album The
Suburbs was widespread and universal, amateur pundits raced to their keyboards by the thousands to express their confusion and outrage in a single, concise burst of profanity: “Who the f--k is Arcade Fire?” And within 24 hours, the Montreal art-rock ensemble had become the subject of its very own Internet meme, one that swiftly spawned songs and poems and T-shirts that you can still order to this day from France.
Such a moment is not likely to erupt once the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony at Los Angeles’s Staples Center draws to a close this Sunday night. Putting aside that the major question heading into this year’s Grammys seems to be whether or not Adele will sweep all six of the categories in which she’s nominated, there’s just not that kind of wild card lurking in the top categories.
Certainly not in the Best Album field, which consists of five of exactly the sorts of albums — Adele’s
21, the Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light, Bruno Mars’s Doo-wops and Hooli
gans, Rihanna’s Loud and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way — one expects to see in the running for Best Album at the Grammys.
The presence of Bon Iver’s “Holocene” in the Best Song and Best Record categories could be the catalyst for a minor upset given that the competition includes Katy Perry, Kanye West, Bruno Mars and, of course, Adele. Justin Vernon’s emotive indie-folk is relatively populist in its presentation, though, marking him as no more of an outsider, really, than the Adele who picked up Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance back when she made her first appearance at the Grammys in 2009.
It’s tasteful music for grown-ups. Vernon’s actually not that far removed from Mumford and Sons, whose crowd-pleasing hit “The Cave” is up for the same two awards.
No, the only real out-of-left-field surprise waiting to be had in the major categories is if 24-year-old dubstep wunderkind Sonny “Skrillex” Moore, up for a remarkable five Grammys this year, somehow bashes his way to the front in the Best New Artist race. That seems unlikely, however, since his competition is Nicki Minaj, the Band Perry, J. Cole and Bon Iver — and doubly unlikely since he’s not even part of the big tribute “highlighting dance/electronica music” to that Grammy organizers announced earlier this week is to be featured in the broadcast. If the Grammys can’t be bothered to put the biggest electronic-music star in America in a salute to that field, his name is likely there for cosmetic reasons, to make the awards look a little more “in touch” than they really are. This planned tribute, in fact, might point up the spirit of conservatism that threatens to permeate this year’s show even better than the other big Grammy news of the week. (The onstage reunion of the surviving Beach Boys will no doubt be one of the most painfully awkward spectacles you’ve ever seen.) The Grammys might have snared Niagara Falls producer Deadmau5 and ubiquitous dance-pop hitmaker David Guetta for their big dance number, but the roster of performers also includes Lil Wayne, Chris Brown and Foo Fighters, none of whom could be considered “elec- tronic” musicians of particular note. As Rollingstone.com noted this week, the Foos “are so oldschool that they made a point of recording their Grammy-nominated album Wasting Light entirely on analog tape.” This will not be the hippest performance ever at the Grammys, nor will it likely have all that much to do with dance music.
So, no, it doesn’t look good for a “Who the f--k is the Arcade Fire?” moment on Sunday night. More likely, we’re going to witness the onset at the Grammys of what one
Guardian writer — lamenting victories by the likes of Adele and Mumford and Sons at last year’s Brit Awards — has termed “the New Boring.” One way or another, it’s going to be tasteful music for grown-ups that wins out.
The weird kids had their moment in the spotlight last year. Now it’s time for some more of that sweet, sweet stuffiness.