2008 Grammy Nominations: Worst. Grammy's. Ever!

Far be it from me to know what is good music. I am hardly one of those long-haired mustachioed poets who have their fingers on the very pulse of all that is right and good in the musical world. I tend towards the mainstream. I like music that is either old or sounds old. Thusly, I consider myself exceptionally qualified to judge the Grammy's, the most mainstream contrived awards show in the history of mainstream contrived awards shows.

The 50th farcical running of the Grammy's may be the worst in history. I thought last year's would take the proverbial cake when there were so few performers it was necessary to dig up Andy Summers and tear Sting away from his mirror in order to reunite the Police. Needless to say, drummer Stewart Copeland was available.

In a stunning display of mind over matter, I was thinking about when the Grammy nominations would be announced and searched the Google machine to discover that the noms had taken place practically the day of. If only this applied to my many daydreams concerning myself surrounded by naked cheerleaders.

Nope, still not true.

Surprisingly enough, Kanye West has moved on from being a cutting-edge producer and musician and become enough of a raving self-parody that he garnered the most Grammy nods and must be a strong favorite to win in most of his categories. If history repeats itself and West is snubbed yet again, I imagine he will explode faster then a Spinal Tap drummer. In all honesty I had problems with several other Album of the Year nominations. For one thing I've never heard of Vince Gill and I could've sworn Herbie Hancock was dead.

By the way, the CBS special "My Night at the Grammy's" detailing the best live performances in Grammy's history was completely dreadful. Really, Green Day had the best performance ever? On one hand, its ironic that all these years of forced collaborations between artists led to a non-collaboration single-band performance being voted as the #1 greatest performance in Grammy's history.

On the other hand, its complete crap. (OK, you twisted my arm. My favorite performance at the Grammy's was Coldplay's "Politik" in 2003, if only because of Chris Martin's pseudo-seizure/dancing and me hoping he would bash his head into his piano. Its kind of like rooting for figure skaters to fall down everytime they jump.)

Who likes the trend of formerly great artists being rewarded for their currently sub-par work? Every year I become more annoyed as the Grammy's increasingly evolve into an incredibly boring lifetime achievement show. This culminated with the Red Hot Chili Peppers winning last year's Best Album award for "Stadium Arcadium," a stale double album with maybe four good songs that was essentially an apology for not giving them the award when they really deserved it for "Californication."

Go back even further, when U2 won in 2005 for the increasingly laughable "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" as tribute for when they lost out to Eric Claption and a frigging "Unplugged" album instead of their "Achtung Baby," the true underrated masterpiece of the 1990s.

I listened to Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black." Its kind of given that she was nominated so much, 6 in all; if you can release something half decent while struggling and defeating substance abuse problems, it virtually guarantees success. I shall hereby call this the "Amy Winehouse Formula" from here on out. In all fairness, she has that old-school R&B sound that's becoming increasingly popular and isn't at all that bad. Unfortunately, she suffers from the widespread "John Mayer Complex" in which all her songs sound the same. Don't get me wrong, I have a definite appreciation for her music, but I sincerely doubt that it honestly deserves to be nominated for Album of the Year.

Will I still watch the Grammy's? Of course. We'll always have the awkward collaborations that don't work, the awful performances, and the incredibly poor sound quality. What's not to love?

Wait, Feist is nominated?