Grammy's Too Tight To Mention
"La la la la
Wait 'til I get my money right.
La la la la
Then you can't tell me nothing, right?
Excuse me, was you saying something?
Uh, uh, you can't tell me nothing.
You can't tell me nothing.
Uh, uh, you can't tell me nothing."
This typically, um, precocious lyric from Kanye West's 2007 album Graduation, which earned eight Grammy nominations, could also be the cocky mantra of the major-label record industry throughout its recent history. With CD sales dropping by 15 percent this past year (expected to plummet even more quickly in 2008), record-company employees being ditched like bad dates, and no real plan to monetize digital downloads, pop music's financial prospectus is dismal.
So what's been the general attitude of the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences? Waaaaaaaaaaaaa! For years now, they've done little but play the crybaby victim, from suing 14-year-olds, college students, and housewives for illegal downloading to now bellyaching about how the Writer's Guild strike is pissing all over the Grammy Awards' 50th Anniversary pageant of self-congratulation.
In a Los Angeles Times story this week, Grammy chief Neil Portnow, reacting to the fact that the Guild was unlikely to grant an interim agreement that would allow writers and other unionized Hollywood personnel to take part in the February 10 show, whined that the WGA had decided "to come after us." He felt the Academy's supposed efforts in Washington (and elsewhere) lobbying for artists' rights and copyright protection earned them a pass. Of course, it's ironic that the writers' main strike issue is proper compensation for digital content, and the record industry has been pathetically unwilling to address the digital realm, putting the livelihood of many artists at risk.
What's more absurd is the idea that the Grammys are some kind of crucial last stand for the industry, where Portnow and Co. will put on such a fabulous extravaganza that previously unaware American consumers will run out immediately afterward and scarf up thousands more copies of those wildly underexposed and unappreciated Kanye, Amy Winehouse, or Foo Fighters CDs, and somehow...what? Save the jobs of a few overpaid execs whose idea of a scintillating new artist is Taylor Swift, a bone-thin, shaky-voiced, model-gorgeous blond teenpopper masquerading as a "country" singer.
What's really bugging Portnow isn't that the industry will crumble because of a cancelled or crippled show-many artists, like Alicia Keys, who performed at a Writer's Strike rally, may be unwilling to cross the picket line, though Beyonce and Dave Grohl are apparently happy to bound over--but that he and his cronies have spent the past five years or more preparing for, and investing in, their 50th Anniversary moment, and now the spectacle is going down the tubes. In addition to the show, the Academy is attempting to brand itself anew--including a Grammy clothing line (Rocawear, look out!)--with licensing deals and the opening of a four-story museum in downtown Los Angeles. (A plan to build what was then called the Grammy Exposition and Hall of Fame in New Orleans, at a budget of $85 million, ran aground some years back.) Plus, according to the Times, there are "a week's worth of splashy events across the city tying into the show, which will be attended by about 15,000 people from all corners of the industry."
"We have been planning for years for this," said Portnow. "All things have been pointing toward this show."
If only the industry had planned so assiduously for the future of its collapsing, ill-conceived business.
