GRAMMY®’s Greatest Hits
For more than 50 years now, the GRAMMY®s have ignited the ire of the entire music industry more than Rebecca Black, Lana Del Rey and William Hung combined. Mostly because it always brings up one simple question: what did the Academy get right this year?
As it turns out, more than you’d think — a fact that’s reinforced, year after year, in the following sale, a carefully curated collection of winners (and a few nominees) from the past four decades that eMusic wholly endorses…
2011
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Okay, so remember Trans? If you know anything about it, you probably know the backstory — legendarily weird 1982 all-vocoder experiment, produced in homage to Kraftwerk; resulted in Geffen Records suing Young for producing "deliberately uncommercial and unrepresentative work." But: has anyone actually heard it?
more »I ask because Trans is the first thing that leapt to my mind when first hearing Young's latest, Daniel Lanois-produced record Le Noise. The parallels between the two albums are nebulous, but they are both driven by a Captain-Ahab sense of deranged aesthetic mission and are tinged by a difficult-to-define pathos. Trans, after all, was motivated not just by Kraftwerk-love but by Young's attempts to communicate with his newborn son, who was afflicted with cerebral palsy. With Le Noise, there is the similar sense that Young has taken a couple of animating ideas — in this senses, rawness and immediacy — and taken them to their illogical extremes. The result is a compellingly inchoate music that sometimes feels in the process of being born inside of your headphones.
To wit: Le Noise consists of eight tracks of Neil banging a guitar in a barren wilderness of echo and jarring, glitchy tape loops. The fuzztone power chords summon the memory of Crazy Horse's dingy rockers, but there's no Crazy Horse here. Just Neil, hammering and howling. This is all ragged and no glory, Crazy Horse without Crazy Horse in the manner of Garfield Minus Garfield, and evoking the same peculiar existential sadness. Occasionally the focus on "rawness" results in songs that are simply undercooked, but more often than not Young finds fresh ways to prickle your neck hairs. "When I sing about love and war, I don't really know what I'm sayin," he croons disarmingly in the opening lines of the gorgeously downcast "Love and War." "Someone's Gonna Rescue You" sounds like the fumes from an evaporated version of "Cowgirl In the Sand." Like Trans, Le Noise is a record that Neil fans might regard blankly or simply forego, but that would be a shame. No one forges ahead on their own rocky path with quite the same sense of unceremonious purposefulness as Neil, and Le Noise is his ornery fearlessness distilled to moonshine potency.
2006
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Adjectives like "ambitious," "jagged," and "startling" have always defined System of a Down, and their third official full-length is no different. Prerelease, the band described Mezmerize as being the first part -- the first side -- of what's essentially a double album. The records' packaging would even slot together, making the eventual Mezmerize/Hypnotize whole. Appropriately then, there's an intro to System's first new material since 2001's brilliant Toxicity. On "Soldier Side" Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian harmonize as they do throughout the record, and Malakian's guitar has a mournful, Eastern air. But it's just a lull before "B.Y.O.B.," a thrash assault pierced with rabid and incredulous screams. "Why do they always send the poor?" Suddenly the gears switch, and the song stomps in crunchy half-time as its lyrics riff with a sick grin on cultural ignorance. The government's lying, System's saying, but "Blast off!/It's party time." The vocal exploration between Tankian and Malakian on Mezmerize is a thrill -- they spur each other on like a two-headed hardcore hero. Their intermingling voices make "Cigaro" more aggressive, frantic, operatic, and totally bananas; they'd be triumphant over the break in "Violent Pornography" if they weren't spitting out lines like "Choking chicks and sodomy." The fantastic "Pornography" is a rusty shiv of absurdity, another example of System's ability to effectively skewer society with little more than hyper guitar, blistering percussion, and weird turns of phrase. Their volatile mix of righteousness, wordiness, odd meters, and thrash has balanced System's activism since their self-titled debut, making them "unique heavy music" over the much more problematic "unique, heavily political music." And Mezmerize doesn't fail to be unique. "Old School Hollywood" essays the bizarre experience of a celebrity baseball game ("Tony Danza cuts in line!") over keyboard effects from "Beat It" and a brutally simplistic rhythm, "This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm on This Song" is more twisted-tongue histrionics and explosive playing, and Tankian and Malakian's harmonies are the catalyst (again!) for making "Revenga" a truly feral epic. System of a Down -- what's another adjective for "awesome"?
2004
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With his debut solo album, Justified, Justin Timberlake borrows from Michael Jackson, from the Thriller-era getup and poses to the sharply modernized spin on the classic Off the Wall sound. To be sure, the sound of the Neptunes productions which dominate Justified is the best thing about the album; they have a lush, sexy, stylish feel that is better, more romantic than most modern R&B. Timberlake is a technically skilled vocalist, with a smooth falsetto. The songs are pretty on the surface -- apart from some flop Timbaland productions (which he redeems with the slinky funk of "Right for Me"), the sound of Justified works well.
2003
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The Soft Bulletin would be a hard act for any band to follow, yet with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the Flaming Lips finally would break the cycle of each great album and commercial breakthrough being followed by a relative dud with a disc that matched or exceeded the accomplishments of its predecessor. Inspired by Madonna's 2000 album Music and Björk's 2001 effort Vespertine, as well as more underground artists such as the Chemical Brothers and the Aphex Twin, the band decided to embrace more electronic sounds and computer technology. Songs such as the two-part title track and "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21" can be heard as parts of a concept album about preserving humanity in the face of encroaching technology — though Wayne, who doesn't own a computer and never has used e-mail, said he intended the exact opposite, championing machines that are more "human" than people. (The idea sprang from watching a TV documentary about robotic dogs providing solace for aged shut-ins.) Either way, the standout among a collection of uniformly excellent tunes turned out to be the band's next big hit: "Do You Realize??," in which Wayne asks a disturbing question ("Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?") seemingly at odds with a beautiful melody resonant of John Lennon's "Imagine," until the songwriter resolves the query with the neatest summation he's produced of his distinctive philosophy: "Instead of saying all of your goodbyes/ Let them know you realize that life goes fast/ It's hard to make the good things last." In other words: Carpe diem.
2000
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This was the album that got me into Tom Waits. Kelly, Stereophonics' vocalist, listens to quite a lot of Tom Waits, and when this album came out he said to me "You've got to hear this." When I first put it on, I thought it was really, really strange, but it really grew on me over time. The deepness of his voice just made me turn my head. This album reminds me that, as a musician, you can go off on any tangent you want. Tom Waits has done that brilliantly throughout his career. Since buying this album, I've gone out and got his entire back catalogue. I had a Tom Waits Day about four or five days ago. I went for a walk for about three hours and just listened to nothing but Tom Waits on my iPod.
1997
1996
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When Pearl Jam released Vitalogy in late 1994, they were essentially the biggest rock band in the world — and not just because Kurt Cobain had died earlier that year. Only two albums deep into their career, the band had been labeled the "voice of a generation" by TIME Magazine, inspired a freakishly devoted fanbase, and had already racked up enough massive radio smashes to fill out a greatest hits record. For most pop musicians, this moment would've been one of ultimate triumph, but Pearl Jam — and specifically the band's charismatic singer Eddie Vedder — freaked out, and the result is one of the strangest mainstream rock albums of all time.
more »Whereas the songs on Ten and Vs. were coated in heavy studio gloss, the group was now actively avoiding any concessions to mainstream success, deliberately sabotaging their most obviously ingratiating tunes with borderline lo-fi production and unpolished vocal takes, lending a muted, understated tone to eventual stadium anthems such as "Corduroy" and "Better Man." The entire record is booby-trapped with peculiar interludes seemingly designed to weed out fairweather fans, from the paranoid accordion-based rant "Bugs" to the disturbing, suicide-obsessed musique-concrete piece "Heyfoxymophandlemamathatsme." These experiments may not be the album's most brilliant and enduring moments, but they define Vitalogy's contrarian spirit and highlight its relentless morbidity and terror. The record is fascinating as a document of a rock star going through a public nervous breakdown, but it is also inspiring as an uncompromising work by a band hell-bent on transitioning from superstardom to a more manageable cult popularity entirely on their own terms.
1995
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Released two months before Kurt Cobain's suicide, at the pinnacle of alt-rock's tortured ethics wars, Dookie made self-pity fun again, exploding in the summer of '94 to re-wire alt-rock's circuitry at a crucial moment. "So close to drowning but I don't mind," Armstrong sang on "Burnout," a line that resonated with kids who hungered to outgrow teen angst rather than turn it into an immolating worldview. Where In Utero made entombed isolation feel like something you soak in, Dookie exploded into the real world; you could deliver pizzas to it, drink 40s in the woods to it, lift weights to it. Its poppy economy was stunning, each song felt like a perfectly shaped phlegm globber hawked in the face of grunge's self-absorbed slovenliness, and big-time production gave the churning riffs a peppy menace, like the guitars are chasing Armstrong down the hall to give him a swirly.
more »"Longview" rumbled and splayed, and turned boredom into a head-banging party. A revised "Welcome to Paradise" rode a sunny monster thrash riff into the heart of American Hell. But Armstrong's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" moment came on "Basket Case." He sings, "sometimes I give myself the creeps" like he's a bad hair day away from pipe-bombing the local Kwiki-mart, then lets the rush of the song's raging, Clash-hot, chorus whisk him away to pop heaven. "When I Come Around" is metal-punk that creates an essential link between Rancid and Poison. Throughout, Dirnt and Cool lock in like a punk rock Sly and Robbie. And even throwaways like "Coming Clean" and "Sassafras Roots" have a buoyant pummeling gleefulness that the NOFXes of the world couldn't touch. Not since the Go-Go's Beauty and the Beat had a band translated new wave to a mass audience with such joy and freedom. Suddenly, Green Day was the biggest American punk band ever.
1992
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That's them in the spotlight, all right. Bolstered by an improbable, mandolin-driven four-and-a-half-minute pop juggernaut, Out of Time finally provided R.E.M. with a song that could be referenced should grandparents ever ask who they were.
more »While certain corners of the rock press had for years referred to the group as "America's Best Rock Band," Out of Time was the first moment R.E.M. ever sounded truly American. Pulling mostly from country and folk music, "Out of Time" contains some of the group's loveliest moments, like the pleading "Half A World Away" and the jangling, mysterious (and mostly wordless) "Endgame." More than any of their previous efforts, Out of Time feels like a collaborative effort; bassist Mike Mills assumes lead vocals on two of the record's stronger tracks — the dizzying '60s pop pastiche "Near Wild Heaven" and the hurtling "Texarkana" — and the whole endeavor would be unthinkable without the rich, red-orange vocals of fellow Georgian Kate Pierson, who here sounds more like a member of the band than a friend along for the ride. Though it may not have aged particularly well, KRS-One's appearance on "Radio Song" served to push R.E.M. into sonically unfamiliar territory, deepening the irony that the group's greatest chart triumph opens with an excoriation of commercial radio (all together now: "The DJ sucks!").
There are counterintuitive moves like this all over Out of Time: The hushed "Low," features Stipe singing in broke-down baritone against a creeping upright bass; in "Belong," he delivers a spoken-word narrative about the end of the world (and marks the first time in the group's history that a song lyric became an album title); "Country Feedback" forgoes a chorus for a series of devastating pleas.
The album closes with one of the group's best (and most underrated) numbers, "Me in Honey." As Pierson spins dizzying vocal circles in the air, Stipe — finding untapped reservoirs of conviction, sings, "There's a lot of honey in this world/ baby, this honey's for me." It's the sound of a man figuring out how to take what he wants, on his own terms.
1989
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A superbly crafted mainstream pop/rock masterpiece, Faith made George Michael an international solo star, selling over ten million copies in the U.S. alone as of 2000. Perhaps even more impressively, it also made him the first white solo artist to hit number one on the R&B album charts. Michael had already proven the soulful power of his pipes by singing a duet with Aretha Franklin on the 1987 smash "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)," but he went even farther when it came to crafting his own material, using sophisticated '70s soul as an indispensable part of his foundation. Of course, it's only a part. Faith's ingenuity lies in the way it straddles pop, adult contemporary, R&B, and dance music as though there were no distinctions between them. In addition to his basic repertoire of funky dance-pop and airy, shimmering ballads, Michael appropriates the Bo Diddley beat for the rockabilly-tinged title track, and proves himself a better-than-decent torch singer on the cocktail jazz of "Kissing a Fool." Michael arranged and produced the album himself, and the familiarity of many of these songs can obscure his skills in those departments -- close listening reveals his knack for shifting elements in and out of the mix and adding subtle embellishments when a little emphasis or variety is needed. Though Faith couldn't completely shake Michael's bubblegum image in some quarters, the album's themes were decidedly adult. "I Want Your Sex" was the most notorious example, of course, but even the love songs were strikingly personal and mature, grappling with complex adult desires and scarred by past heartbreak. All of it adds up to one of the finest pop albums of the '80s, setting a high-water mark that Michael was only able to reach in isolated moments afterward.
1987
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Having written songs and recorded with musicians in styles ranging from reggae to salsa to gospel, it was hardly surprising that Paul Simon would fall under the sway of South African mbaqanga, or township jive. The surprise came in his making a whole album of it — and doing so while the nation's oppressive apartheid system was being vigorously protested by his fellow musicians, most visibly on 1985's Artists United Against Apartheid album, Sun City. So of course 1986's Graceland was controversial — Simon practically invited it, not least by dueting with Linda Ronstadt, whose appearance at the S.A. resort Sun City violated the U.N.'s cultural boycott of the nation — as did Simon, for recording parts of the album in Johannesburg, with local musicians.
more »But decades down the line, Simon's album sounds as remarkable as ever. Aside from the final two tracks, collaborations with zydeco band Good Rockin' Dopsie and L.A.'s Los Lobos that draw a line between the South African groove with North American styles a little too eagerly, Graceland is the sharpest music Simon had made since his debut 14 years before. "I Know What I Know" has the keenest wit — the contrast between Simon's bemused lyric ("I said, 'What does that mean, that I really remind you of money?'/And she said, 'Who am I to blow against the wind?'") and the excitable background vocal chatter whips the track into a froth even more readily than the bubbling guitar of Ray Phiri rubbing against the rubbery bass of Baghiti Kumalo. But it's the opening two-shot of the pan-global panic-and-release of "The Boy in the Bubble"— drummer Isaac Mtshali's opening snare hit cuts through the opening accordion like lightning — and "Graceland," the clearest-eyed and most genuinely hopeful breakup song Simon ever wrote, that make this venture sound authoritative as well as daring.
1986
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Former model Sade made an immediate and huge impact with her 1984 debut album, Diamond Life. Her sound and approach were deliberately icy, her delivery and voice aloof, deadpan, and cold, and yet she became an instant sensation through such songs as "Smooth Operator" and "Your Love Is King," where the slick production and quasi-jazz backing seemed to register with audiences thinking they were hearing a jazz vocalist.
1984
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Buoyed by the mega-success of Off The Wall, Jackson and producer Jones sought to up the stakes in every way with Thriller. The songs stretched on longer, the beats hit harder, and the melodies swung for the rafters.
more »While all those elements may have aligned in perfect harmony, there's no way Thriller would have had the history-altering impact it had without a host of other factors, chief among them Jackson's groundbreaking videos for "Billie Jean" and "Beat It," along with Jackson's performance of the moonwalk on the "Motown 25th Anniversary special" — a feat that made him seem not only to defy gravity but to transcend the bounds of humanity.
Just as "Don't Stop" did for Off The Wall, the new disc's "Wanna Be Starting Something" kicked things off decisively, declaring its fortitude and durability right in its title. The bass line's rhythm had both dance-floor resonance and pop panache. But for an album with just ten tracks, there's a bit of filler here as well. "The Girl Is Mine" repeats the trick on "Wall" of bringing Paul McCartney in to contribute to a track (as well as to bolster Jackson's attempt to equate himself with a Beatle). And while the title track may be propulsive, the use of Vincent Price as a narrator smacks of kitsch.
Still, not since the Stones scored a one/two punch with the singles "Bitch" and "Brown Sugar" in 1971 has a pop act had the back-to-back brilliance of "Billie Jean" and "Beat It." The former boasted rhythms and hooks like nothing else, while "Beat It" brought rock 'n roll into Jackson's realm with an organic power he has never equaled. Popularity isn't necessarily a measure of excellence (I call to the stand "Frampton Comes Alive"), but in the case of "Thriller," the disc's commercial dominance equals its role as peerless pop.
1979
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To say that Steve Martin completely redefined modern American comedy by introducing the absurd, the rambunctious and the notion of irony is probably overstating things a bit. But not by much. The first half of this album, Martin's first, was recorded in a small club in San Francisco, while the second was taped at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. That Martin was the hottest comic in the country, taking things from small clubs in local California to packed arenas (largely thanks to his cult hit "King Tut," included here) in the span of just a few years in the '70s, is a wonder, because Martin's act at the time — a Swiss watch of idiotic genius — is very, very strange. There are no extended ruminations on airline food or cranky wives here, instead we get spastic recitations on tracks named "Language," "Religion," and "Philosophy." Martin's buffoon/savant act is an amazing refraction of everything that came before him. You think you see a joke coming, and then Martin falls on his face, embarrassing himself, shining a high beam on his idea, and getting legit laughs. On speaking in public he says, "Language is kinda my thing, being a comedian, and if you don't have a command of the language it's nothing to be embarrassed about. This is my profession. Let's face it, some people have a way with words and other people...[long pause] oh, not have way, I guess." Still, he's a comedian in complete control: When a heckler yarls, "What's your mood watch say?" Martin calmly purrs, "I remember when I had my first beer," a withering, simple rejection of the heckle. The latter half of this album is less a dialectical excursion than a forum for Martin's rising celebrity; he'd shot to national fame on Saturday Night Live as one of the Festrunk brothers — two wild and crazy European guys — and those gags are performed here with a manic glee. But it's the first half that holds up better. Martin, devalued over the years as a mediocre film star, is brilliant and bold on this album, reinventing an American art form with a banjo, balloon animals and a warped sense of self.
1972
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Carole King brought the fledgling singer/songwriter phenomenon to the masses with Tapestry, one of the most successful albums in pop music history. A remarkably expressive and intimate record, it's a work of consummate craftsmanship. Always a superior pop composer, King reaches even greater heights as a performer; new songs like the hits "It's Too Late" and "I Feel the Earth Move" rank solidly with past glories, while chestnuts like "You've Got a Friend," "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" take on added resonance when delivered in her own warm, compelling voice. With its reliance on pianos and gentle drumming, Tapestry is a light and airy work on its surface, occasionally skirting the boundaries of jazz, but it's also an intensely emotional record, the songs confessional and direct; in its time it connected with listeners like few records before it, and it remains an illuminating experience decades later. [The 1999 CD reissue on Sony adds two bonus tracks: the previously unreleased outtake "Out in the Cold" and a previously unreleased live 1973 version (on solo piano) of "Smackwater Jack."]
1971
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Bridge Over Troubled Water was one of the biggest-selling albums of its decade, and it hasn't fallen too far down on the list in years since. Apart from the gospel-flavored title track, which took some evolution to get to what it finally became, however, much of Bridge Over Troubled Water also constitutes a stepping back from the music that Simon & Garfunkel had made on Bookends -- this was mostly because the creative partnership that had formed the body and the motivation for the duo's four prior albums literally consumed itself in the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The overall effect was perhaps the most delicately textured album to close out the 1960s from any major rock act. Bridge Over Troubled Water, at its most ambitious and bold, on its title track, was a quietly reassuring album; at other times, it was personal yet soothing; and at other times, it was just plain fun. The public in 1970 -- a very unsettled time politically, socially, and culturally -- embraced it; and whatever mood they captured, the songs matched the standard of craftsmanship that had been established on the duo's two prior albums. Between the record's overall quality and its four hits, the album held the number one position for two and a half months and spent years on the charts, racking up sales in excess of five million copies. The irony was that for all of the record's and the music's appeal, the duo's partnership ended in the course of creating and completing the album.
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isiscaton May 14, 2012 at 1:09 pm said: Why is all the good stuff not available for download in SA?
