Let Vin Diesel produce the Grammys
Since they wanna people-please so bad
Every awards season, as the merits of various nominees are being scrutinized and dissected, I can’t help but think about Vin Diesel’s 2015 assertion that Furious 7 would win Best Picture at the Oscars:
“Universal is going to have the biggest movie in history with this movie. It will probably win best picture at the Oscars, unless the Oscars don’t want to be relevant ever…There is nothing that will ever come close to the power of this thing.”
Diesel’s whole persona is being over-the-top, but I can see his point here. While high art Furious 7 is not, it went on to gross over $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the third highest-grossing film of 2015 and the fourth highest-grossing film of all time at the time of its release. This opens up the age-old debate of popularity vs. artistic merit — should we reward popular things for being popular, believing that their resonance across large audiences suggests quality itself (in this court, we have fan-voted recognitions like the People’s Choice Awards). Or, on the other hand, is artistic criticism an art in and of itself, requiring a historical understanding of the landscape and a breadth of theoretical references (consider the high-minded juries at film festivals across the globe)?
Most nominating bodies will commit to one end of, though it’s thrilling when they strike the right balance between popular appeal and artistic merit — consider the Oscar wins for Parasite and Get Out. But more often than not, attempting to have their cake and eat it too results in dissatisfaction from both ends. Which of course, brings us to the 2023 Grammy Awards.
More than any other major award show, I always feel the Grammys try to play both sides. Their confounding categories often bring together stan favorites, elder statesmen, and industry underdogs, leaving all parties befuddled by seemingly incongruent wins across the ceremony.
Take this year’s Song of the Year category. The nominees included everything from Taylor Swift’s ten-minute “All Too Well” opus to GAYLE’s grating TikTok earworm “abcdefu.” But in a surprise win in a field that included Beyonce and Adele too, the trophy went to Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That.” Raitt is a 50-year veteran of the music industry, respected among her peers and with a well-reviewed album this year. However, the 73-year-old blues singer is far from zeitgeist-y and had many young people tweeting “who is bonnie raitt” and “I’ve never even heard this year’s ‘song of the year’ 🤔.”
But this shocker was but a teaser for the main event: Album of the Year.
Personally, I am still waiting for them to award Album of the Year to Lorde’s 2017 masterpiece Melodrama, so nothing will move me until then. But to others, this award is generally considered the biggest of the night. This year’s nominees included a slew of starry names, featuring entries from Adele, ABBA, Bad Bunny, Coldplay, Harry Styles and of course, Beyonce — at once the frontrunner, for her universally acclaimed Renaissance, and the underdog, never having won an AOTY.
My readers know I cannot abide Harry Styles. He makes bad music and wears worse clothes — and let’s not even mention his forays into acting. His first solo effort, 2017’s Harry Styles I will admit is good, but it’s all been downhill from there. Last year’s Harry’s House is pastiche upon pastiche, a mood board of an album whose verses are glib recitations of the Urban Outfitters homepage (“Keep Driving” opens with: Black and white film camera / Yellow sunglasses / Ashtray, swimming pool). Lead single “As It Was,” nominated for four Grammys, brings nothing new to the pop genre, itself a shameless recreation of indie artist Dayglow’s 2019 song “Hot Rod” right down to the cutesy sampled intro.
While most viewers feared a repeat of 2016’s AOTY, where Adele’s 25 beat out Bey’s Lemonade and prompted an apologetic acceptance speech from the former, I dreaded further validation of Styles’ music (I still can’t believe the maddening “Watermelon Sugar” is a Grammy winner). But as we all know by now, it came true.
Whether you choose to believe that the Adele/Beyonce/Bad Bunny trifecta split the vote, or that Grammy voters simply chose the path of least resistance, it was a shock decision that derailed a ceremony clearly designed around a different winner (not unlike when Anthony Hopkins won over the late Chadwick Boseman at the 2021 Academy Awards).
It’s hard to be gracious while accepting an award no one thinks you deserve (hi Macklemore) and Styles certainly was not up to the task. It continues to baffle me that despite being in the public eye for 13 years, he still has yet to develop mediagenic speaking skills. In his classic, clumsy fashion, he came up with “this doesn't happen to people like me very often.” We can only guess at what he means (though even the most generous reading is still pretty questionable), but I can promise you it happens to people like Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter even less.
All this being said, since the Recording Academy clearly has a desire to go the Top 40 route — claims to higher aspirations aside — they might as well bring in the man whose driving principle has been giving the people what they want. If its mass appeal the Grammys want, it’s mass appeal Vin Diesel would give them. With a healthy dose of FAMILY too.
And another thing
For all its shortcomings, the Fast and Furious series gets a lot of credit from me for one of the most diverse mainstream film franchises. The soundtracks especially are filled with all kinds of multicultural hits — my Latin pop playlist pulls heavily from The Fate of the Furious soundtrack. Diesel would never have disrespected Bad Bunny by reducing his opening number to “singing in non-English.”
![Pop Crave on Twitter: "Spotify created a playlist of Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift songs called '[speaking non-english],' seemingly named after a viral photo of the closed captions during his performance at](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0dd72d27-2ea1-4478-8f69-bc84a6d64eaa_1310x1310.jpeg "Pop Crave on Twitter: \"Spotify created a playlist of Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift songs called '[speaking non-english],' seemingly named after a viral photo of the closed captions during his performance at")
Mi padrastro nuevo
People who are fans of both Taylor Swift and Harry Styles love to do this bit where they say “I am a child of divorce” every time they see the two reunite (because, you know, they dated once).
Well, I’m pleased to announce that a new stepfather has entered the picture:
Red carpet watch
Grammys fashion was fairly lackluster this year, a lot of all-black looks giving it a dour vibe. The night was not without standouts though —
Best Dressed: Cardi B in custom Gaurav Gupta Couture
Worst Dressed: Miguel in an upsetting amount of denim
Fast X is coming
Ok now we’re just verging on excess with all the Fast and Furious content but it’s truly the gift that keeps on giving. The franchise is winding down with two more installments, a conclusion that Vin Diesel explained by way of comparison to another franchise…The Lord of the Rings?
Anyway, the trailer for the 10th installment has dropped. Adding stars like Rita Moreno and Brie Larson to the already sprawling cast, the Oscar-winner tally is now up to four. (In fairness to my point above, as the family expands, their ethnic backgrounds begin to befuddle me — you’re telling me Vin Diesel, John Cena, Jordanna Brewster, and Rita Moreno are all related?):
DON’T FORGET: Rihanna performs this Sunday
I hope nobody got their hopes up, as it seems Rihanna will not be surprise-releasing any new music before her Super Bowl halftime performance. As much as we would love to hear it, she already has an unreasonably deep catalog to pull from for her 13-minute performance, so I’m not too worried. I personally hope to hear “Don’t Stop the Music.”
It’s tradition for performers to bring out a special guest or two, so here are our best guesses at who will show up. In order from most to least likely (I wanted to do that odds thing like +100, -250, -350 but idk how it works):
Jay-Z: the man loves to take credit for Rihanna’s career wins, and they do have some iconic collabs. He’s also produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, so he’s due to pop up one of these times.
A$AP Rocky: Rihs #1 fan, you know he’ll already be in the building. While they don’t have any songs together (yet!) he could easily pick up any of the verses from her cancelled collaborators (namely, Kanye West).
Nicki Minaj: Though they haven’t been seen together in a long time, Minaj and Rihanna once sat together at the top of the dance-pop sound that dominated the early 2010s. They have a couple of underrated collabs that would kill live.
Paul McCartney: I will forever seek justice for FourFiveSeconds, which never officially made it onto a Rihanna album. This kind of offbeat pairing is what the Super Bowl stage loves to see (remember Maroon 5 x Travis Scott?), not to mention a McCartney appearance would play well with the NFL crowd.
WILLOW: I saw a devastating tweet about how “older people really like Rihanna” — after 7 albumless years, does she need someone younger to attract the Gen Z crowd? Willow’s pop punk stylings could be a good fit for an update to something like ROCKSTAR 101.
Drake: I think the only person less likely to appear than Rihanna’s former flame would have to be Ye himself. But boy, wouldn’t we love to see “What’s My Name?” one last time?
Vanessa Hudgens is engaged to MLB player Cole Tucker
Which is wonderful…but like, inevitable?
Be well,
Derek