2025 GRAMMY Awards Live

Vintage65

darthed1981 said:

Probably not your kind of thing, but I did find her album a surprisingly impressive bit of work.

I think Chappell & Sabrina are both great at what they do, and good luck to them.

axisus

thecolourbox said:

^^ i just looked up the list of every grammy winner for best album and I'd say that's always been the case, with only a very few exceptions where I've not really heard of them - in fact there are more in recent years that I've not heard of than there have been for ages - 2019 Kacey Musgraves, 2022 Jon Batiste for example. Last one before that where it wasn't somebody I'd consider a well known popular artist was 1981, Christopher Cross (I've no idea who that is, maybe he was massive at the time?)

https://www.popvortex.com/music/grammy-awards/album-of-the-year.php

He had a massive hit with the theme to the film Arthur (which is a lovely song!). Also Sailing, and a personal fave was called Ride like the wind (I think?). I guess he was one of the originals of what is now deemed 'yacht rock'. A fascinating fact - in the early days of Deep Purple they were touring America and Blackmore fell ill. Christopher Cross came in and depped for him! Apparently he was a big Purple fan and could play some of the songs. His words:

Ritchie Blackmore got very sick. And so the decision was made that they didn't really want to cancel the show if they could help it. And Joe Miller--who was kind of managing me at the time--said, 'Y'know, there's this guitarist in town who's a big fan of Ritchie's and he could probably step in.'

"The singer [Ian Gillan] was in favor of it, I remember, but Joe pretty much ran the band and was the one that made the decision that it was better to play than not play," Cross continued. "So I came down, and I had a Flying V and long hair, and I'm this big Ritchie fan. So we played the songs that I knew and then we jammed some blues. And they told the crowd Ritchie wouldn't be there. It was a great moment for me. And then, when they left town, I went to the airport and got to meet Ritchie, and he thanked me for covering for him."

stickyfiddle

darthed1981 said:

stickyfiddle said:

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

axisus said:

....plus I visibly cringed as Chappell Roan's statement: "Labels, we got you, but do you got us?"

I hope her lyrics are better than that.

Probably not your kind of thing, but I did find her album a surprisingly impressive bit of work.

I wouldn’t call it surprising. It’s just a fantastic pop record

OK, I'll re-phrase that.

It's a surprisingly consistently impressive bit of work.  Even where it droops a bit and the songs go to pop music's current default setting (sounding like TayTay), like on "my kink is karma" or "after midnight" for example, they are still nice bits of songwriting that for some artists would qualify as singles.

However the peaks... songs like "Red Wine Supernova", "Casual", "Pink Pony Club".. are genuinely excellent.

One of the main achievements of it is you can listen to it from beginning to end... and forget entirely that probably her best song isn't even on it.

I listened to it almost non stop on a 14 hour flight from NYC to Abu Dhabi. Still love it. 

I think MYIK or After Midnight are both great too

EricTheWeary

axisus said:

thecolourbox said:

^^ i just looked up the list of every grammy winner for best album and I'd say that's always been the case, with only a very few exceptions where I've not really heard of them - in fact there are more in recent years that I've not heard of than there have been for ages - 2019 Kacey Musgraves, 2022 Jon Batiste for example. Last one before that where it wasn't somebody I'd consider a well known popular artist was 1981, Christopher Cross (I've no idea who that is, maybe he was massive at the time?)

https://www.popvortex.com/music/grammy-awards/album-of-the-year.php

He had a massive hit with the theme to the film Arthur (which is a lovely song!). Also Sailing, and a personal fave was called Ride like the wind (I think?). I guess he was one of the originals of what is now deemed 'yacht rock'. A fascinating fact - in the early days of Deep Purple they were touring America and Blackmore fell ill. Christopher Cross came in and depped for him! Apparently he was a big Purple fan and could play some of the songs. His words:

Ritchie Blackmore got very sick. And so the decision was made that they didn't really want to cancel the show if they could help it. And Joe Miller--who was kind of managing me at the time--said, 'Y'know, there's this guitarist in town who's a big fan of Ritchie's and he could probably step in.'

"The singer [Ian Gillan] was in favor of it, I remember, but Joe pretty much ran the band and was the one that made the decision that it was better to play than not play," Cross continued. "So I came down, and I had a Flying V and long hair, and I'm this big Ritchie fan. So we played the songs that I knew and then we jammed some blues. And they told the crowd Ritchie wouldn't be there. It was a great moment for me. And then, when they left town, I went to the airport and got to meet Ritchie, and he thanked me for covering for him."

Second Discussion on here today mentioning Christopher Cross as he's been doing the supports to the ongoing Toto tour. [ If there's a current Discussion on ill judged cover versions the Saxon cover of Ride Like The Wind would get him mentioned in there as well].  CC is pretty much peak Yacht Rock. 
And regarding his Grammys interesting that he won 5 in 1980, the most in a single year by any artist until Billy Eilish equalled him in 2020. 

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:
If there's a current Discussion on ill judged cover versions the Saxon cover of Ride Like The Wind would get him mentioned in there as well.

I like that version.  I thought Biff did a good job. 

EricTheWeary

Philly_Q said:

EricTheWeary said:
If there's a current Discussion on ill judged cover versions the Saxon cover of Ride Like The Wind would get him mentioned in there as well.

I like that version.  I thought Biff did a good job. 

It came up on my YouTube feed the other day. Possibly my negative feelings towards it are enhanced by the cheesy video. If thecolourbox hasn't heard of Christopher Cross I suspect as a reference it's not really going to help anyway. 

Philly_Q

I don't think Saxon have any non-cheesy videos, to be fair.

thecolourbox

I just thought Chris Cross was one of the steps in the Cha Cha Slide. But my point was more that the "best albums" at the Grammy awards are always chosen from the most popular acts of the time, it's not a recent thing that's changed. There are other awards ceremonies for the lesser known stuff I guess

Philly_Q

thecolourbox said:

I just thought Chris Cross was one of the steps in the Cha Cha Slide. But my point was more that the "best albums" at the Grammy awards are always chosen from the most popular acts of the time, it's not a recent thing that's changed. There are other awards ceremonies for the lesser known stuff I guess

Point taken.  It just shows how little attention I've paid to them.  So not like the Mercury prize, where they try to pick the winner from a shortlist who have fewer fans than the collective band members.

Offset

I love music but the Grammys are tosh.

EricTheWeary

thecolourbox said:

I just thought Chris Cross was one of the steps in the Cha Cha Slide. But my point was more that the "best albums" at the Grammy awards are always chosen from the most popular acts of the time, it's not a recent thing that's changed. There are other awards ceremonies for the lesser known stuff I guess

Also Kriss Kross were a hip hop act. I don't know how often they got confused with Christopher Cross. 
The specialist categories at the Grammys do contain some lesser known artists (or at least lesser known outside their genre) and those can be worth looking through. 

darthed1981

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

axisus said:

....plus I visibly cringed as Chappell Roan's statement: "Labels, we got you, but do you got us?"

I hope her lyrics are better than that.

Probably not your kind of thing, but I did find her album a surprisingly impressive bit of work.

It's definitely not my kind of thing, and people can tell me how amazing Chappell Roan, Charli XCX etc are until they're blue in the face, but I'm still not going to listen to it.  I seemingly don't have the ability to appreciate "exquisite pop craftsmanship", or whatever... I either like music or I don't, and my tastes are not eclectic.

I hope you didn't take that as me saying you "should" like it.

If there is one thing that really grinds my gears it's the idea that there is music you "should" or "shouldn't" like - see threads passim ad nauseum, to quote Private Eye.

Was purely talking about my personal reaction to it.

Philly_Q

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

axisus said:

....plus I visibly cringed as Chappell Roan's statement: "Labels, we got you, but do you got us?"

I hope her lyrics are better than that.

Probably not your kind of thing, but I did find her album a surprisingly impressive bit of work.

It's definitely not my kind of thing, and people can tell me how amazing Chappell Roan, Charli XCX etc are until they're blue in the face, but I'm still not going to listen to it.  I seemingly don't have the ability to appreciate "exquisite pop craftsmanship", or whatever... I either like music or I don't, and my tastes are not eclectic.

I hope you didn't take that as me saying you "should" like it.

If there is one thing that really grinds my gears it's the idea that there is music you "should" or "shouldn't" like - see threads passim ad nauseum, to quote Private Eye.

Was purely talking about my personal reaction to it.

@darthed1981 No, no, no, not at all!  I know you wouldn't do that.    

I do occasionally read posts on here that seem to be telling us we "should" like something (Jacob Collier, anyone...?), but I've never felt that from anything you've posted.

Vintage65

Offset said:

I love music but the Grammys are tosh.

Most people start off listening to popular music, and then some meander off into the weeds of obscure musical discovery.

stickyfiddle

I’m not going to tell people they should love Chappell Roan, but they should definitely listen to a few tracks (Red Wine Supernova, Hot to Go, Femininomenon, Pink Pony Club) because they’re genuinely fantastic 

Vintage65

stickyfiddle said:

I’m not going to tell people they should love Chappell Roan, but they should definitely listen to a few tracks (Red Wine Supernova, Hot to Go, Femininomenon, Pink Pony Club) because they’re genuinely fantastic 

Some music lovers think trendy critically acclaimed bands like Fontaines DC are shyte, so you can't please everybody 

darthed1981

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

darthed1981 said:

Philly_Q said:

axisus said:

....plus I visibly cringed as Chappell Roan's statement: "Labels, we got you, but do you got us?"

I hope her lyrics are better than that.

Probably not your kind of thing, but I did find her album a surprisingly impressive bit of work.

It's definitely not my kind of thing, and people can tell me how amazing Chappell Roan, Charli XCX etc are until they're blue in the face, but I'm still not going to listen to it.  I seemingly don't have the ability to appreciate "exquisite pop craftsmanship", or whatever... I either like music or I don't, and my tastes are not eclectic.

I hope you didn't take that as me saying you "should" like it.

If there is one thing that really grinds my gears it's the idea that there is music you "should" or "shouldn't" like - see threads passim ad nauseum, to quote Private Eye.

Was purely talking about my personal reaction to it.

@darthed1981 No, no, no, not at all!  I know you wouldn't do that.    

I do occasionally read posts on here that seem to be telling us we "should" like something (Jacob Collier, anyone...?), but I've never felt that from anything you've posted.

Thanks - appreciate it.

Philly_Q

stickyfiddle said:

I’m not going to tell people they should love Chappell Roan, but they should definitely listen to a few tracks (Red Wine Supernova, Hot to Go, Femininomenon, Pink Pony Club) because they’re genuinely fantastic 

OK, I've listened to them.  Can I go home now please sir?