When Beyoncé recently won four Grammys, those statuettes put her in first place among those who’ve received the award: a total of 29.
Good.
She deserves them for a career loaded with memorable hits for nearly a quarter-century.
Having said that, I’d like to see an asterisk put next to her achievement.
It’s not anything against Beyoncé. It’s just that the Grammys were rarely as considerate to her predecessors in its first quarter century of existence (1958-1983).
Some may grumble.
“But Ozmoe,” you say,
“Stevie Wonder won 25 Grammys”
“Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney:”
“Eighteeen.“
“Each.“
“Ray Charles: 17.“
“And Michael Jackson: 13!“
“How could the awards be biased against hitmakers, when these examples from that era have that many wins?”
DROP DOWN AND GIVE ME TWENTY.
The answer is: That they’re outliers.
And here’s two groupings that bolster my contention.
1. 1960s and 1970s Greats:
Total wins: 30.
You read right.
Ten of the biggest acts of all time combined have two less Grammys than what Beyonce has amassed by herself.
Their wins are pretty embarrassing for the legacy of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Grammys.
The Beatles won only 4 of their Grammys when they were together as a group, for Best New Artist and Best Performance by a Vocal Group for A Hard Day’s Night in 1964, and Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Album in 1967, both for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The other 3 came in connection with the 1996 Anthology of their work.
For 1966, 1969 and 1970: the Fab Four got no more than 2 failed nominations in those years.
Elton John claimed his first statuette in 1985, for being one of Dionne Warwick’s “friends” earning Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in That’s What Friends Are For. Prior to that, he had 15 nominations – with no wins from 1970 onward.
The Bee Gees got their wins from Saturday Night Fever in some fashion. They had one nomination outside of that hit album, for Best Pop Vocal by a Duo, Group or Orchestra for How Can You Mend a Broken Heart in 1970. Otherwise, they had no other nominations.
That didn’t stop the Grammys from doing a TV tribute special for the group a few years ago, even though Barry Gibb was the sole surviving member.
Elvis Presley lost 9 times before getting the Best Sacred Performance Grammy in 1967. He won in the same category twice before getting a posthumous nomination in 1978 for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male. Incredibly, he wasn’t nominated for his pop vocals after 1961.
The Rolling Stones waited until 1978 for their first nomination for Some Girls as Album of the Year.
They finally won 15 years later for Best Rock Album (Voodoo Lounge) and Best Music Video, Short Form (Love is Strong), nearly 30 years after their first hits in America.
James Brown won his first time out with Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag as Best Rhythm and Blues Recording for 1965. He waited 19 years later to get next his second Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male, with Living in America. Between those two awards, he compiled a measly three other Grammy nominations, despite being known as “Soul Brother Number One.”
As for the rest, their sole wins were as follows:
- Neil Diamond for Jonathan Livingston Seagull as Best Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special in 1973
- Rod Stewart for Stardust: The Great American Songbook Volume III as Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2004 (after 12 failed nominations)
- Chicago for If You Leave Me Now as Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus in 1976
- Led Zeppelin for Celebration Day as Best Rock Album in 2013
Regarding other notable names of the era, the Beach Boys and Queen were both 0 for 4 among Grammy nominations. Pat Boone was 0 for 6.
Connie Francis never got a nomination.
And the first one who cracks wise with:
“Hey, Connie – Who’s Sorry Now?” gets a rap in the mouth.“
2. Motown Masters:
Total wins – 15
Omitting Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, the label that was “The Sound of Young America” is poorly represented by Grammy wins. And again, those wins aren’t too impressive:
Half of the Temptations’ wins were two for Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone in 1972. Lionel Richie didn’t get his first of 4 Grammys until Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male for Truly in 1982.
Gladys Knight and the Pips got only 1 of their 3 wins when they were with Motown.
Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye) won for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group, Duo or Chorus in 1972.
Likewise, Marvin Gaye had left Motown when he got 2 Grammys in 1983 for Sexual Healing. He relished the success, having lost 8 times previously. Smokey’s single win was for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male for Just to See Her in 1987.
Motown artists with nominations but no wins are:
- Diana Ross (13 – wow!)
- The Supremes (twice)
- The Jackson 5 (twice)
- The Four Tops (once)
- Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (once),
- Mary Wells (once)
- and Martha and the Vandellas (once).
Because they had their first chart records at Motown, some may include the Spinners (or the Detroit Spinners, as TNOCS friend JJ Live at Leeds knows them in the United Kingdom). They went 0 for 6 nominations.
And receiving zero nominations were Eddie Kendricks and the Marvelettes.
All told, the 1960s and 1970s Greats and Motown Masters have just 13 more Grammys than Beyonce has currently, even though collectively they’ve compiled more than 100 No. 1 hits and more than 600 top 40 records. That’s just unfair, in my view.
Sorry, Grammys. I can forgive and forget.
But not the way you’ve treated most of the major “old school” rock and pop stars.
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I am afraid of the Beyhive, the BTS Army, and whoever’s policing Metacritic reviews, but imagine what the 60’s Beatlemania fans would be like with the power of Twitter…
Metacritic “used” to be like Stereogum. The CEO would interact with its users. He even gave me an icon that read “Advance Scout”. And then Metacritic went big time. And when you’d e-mail him, he was cool enough to e-mail back, but instead of using his full first name, he’d sign off as a capital letter and dot.
The problem with aggregation is that some critics tend to follow the pack, while on the other hand, you have Armond White overpraising “Transporters 2”.
Whenever I hear that Drake is the all-time chart leader, or that Taylor Swift has 10 records in the top 10, I remind myself that there are two things in play:
Chart methodology is completely different than it was back in the old days. Boomer biases aside, it feels more amazing that the Beatles had the top-five records on the Hot 100 on a certain week than other similar achievements that we see today.
The other thing has to do with inflation. Just like a decent pair of shoes was $22 back in 1964, perhaps there’s some sort of corollary to awards, and award show participation and saturation. Definitely seems like there’s more of it today.
The Grammys changed their voting methodology in May 2021. Prior to that, “secret committees” did the nominating. This, allegedly, allowed people to vote for their business partners or friends.
The new rules eliminated the committees and limited people to vote in no more than ten categories across no more than three genres. This is supposed to encourage people to vote only in areas of their expertise, though I suspect there will still be charges of corruption.
Anyway, the few Grammy voters I know don’t seem to take it very seriously. I worked more closely with a single genre awards show (that will go unnamed here) for a few years and it seemed like most voters thought of it as a chore. They’d get dozens of CDs to listen to, but whether they did or not was up to them.
The results definitely affects sales, which is why we have awards, but is it any reflection on who’s making great music? That’s debatable.
Great insights here, Ozmoe.
Your summary has me thinking that the Grammys are very much an award for past achievements. The Stones’ win struck me as something similar to Steely Dan winning album of the year; it was more a recognition of all the great work from yesteryear than an accolade for that specific work. Think Scorcesse winning for The Departed.
And then there’s Jethro Tull winning the Hard Rock/Metal Performance Grammy in 1989 (over Metallica, for crying out loud).
Fascinating and very surprising stuff for this outsider. Now that I’ve seen how badly some of the greatest artists of our times fared I need to have a look at who they were losing out to.
Our version of the Grammy’s; the Brit Awards didn’t start til 1977 and that was a one off to celebrate 25 years of the UK charts. Sgt Pepper took best album, Procul Harum A Whiter Shade of Pale was best single, Shirley Bassey was best female and Cliff Richard best male. It only became an annual event in 1982 and for the rest of the 80s was considered as being pretty out of touch with actual pop music with the same people nominated year after year.
Robbie Williiams leads the way here with 13 wins but Adele is only one behind him so I expect she’ll overtake him whenever she cranks out a new album.
The Grammys are just a showcase. Industry insiders voting on what they think represents the best in the business, with all the influence peddling, quid pro quo, and office politics that suggests.
On a more realistic level they’re comparing apples and oranges most of the time. How could you compare Renaissance to Un Verano Sin Ti or In These Silent Days or Harry’s House? They’re very different works with disparate objectives and points of view. Even within genre categories you get this. Is “Break My Soul” a better dance/electronic recording than “Don’t Forget My Love” or “Intimidated”? I don’t know and neither do you. It’s an impossible question to answer.
What jumps out at me is no wins for Diana Ross. I would never have guessed. Not a huge fan, but I like “Upside Down”. Instead of Best Female Vocal Performance, they banished her to Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. She lost to Stephanie Mills. I’m familiar with “I Never Knew Love Like This Before”. That’s fine. But the other three nominees look like filler. So overall, I think “Upside Down” is in the wrong category.
In Best Female Vocal Performance, I would switch out “On the Radio” with “Upside Down”. “Fame”, “Magic”, “The Rose”, and “Woman in Love” are decent picks. I’m singling out “On the Radio” solely because I can’t readily summon the melody in my head.
Wow. The Grammy people really liked Christopher Cross.
My favorite Supremes song is “Forever Came Today”.
The Grammys had a long, horrid history of segregating performances by black artists to R&B, and the one you cited was one of them. And often, they were head-scratchers. Take Gladys Knight and the Pips: “Neither One of Us” got a pop nomination but “Midnight Train to Georgia” failed to get a Record of the Year nomination (getting an R&B group vocal nomination instead).
“Midnight Train to Georgia” might not be the best example. Roberta Flack won Record of the Year that year and Stevie Wonder was also nominated.
The Grammys (like all award shows) are an excuse for drinking games and water cooler talk for our miserable little lives. No one earns a Grammy so much as has it bestowed upon them by unseen forces using criteria that have no relationship to talent or merit.
Not to knock past winners (Beyoncé et al) but their talent is a different thing entirely from the Grammy award (or lack thereof).
If the National Association of Real Estate Professionals gives Nancy down the block its REPOTY award, does that make her truly the best real estate professional, or just the person who got nominated by some well-connected blowhard who people want to satisfy.
Have the best-selling album, get the most airplay, sell a buttload of concert tickets… those are measurable and fairly objective heralds of success. People who are Grammy chasers but not particularly popular (looking at you, H.E.R.) are playing a game that doesn’t look like much fun.
Cedar Rapids.
I’m far too lazy to do the research, but I think there are a lot more Grammy categories in recent decades than there were in the past, so it’s easier for someone like Beyoncé to get an award for “Best Interpretive Dance Song As Part Of A Spoken Word Album”, where the Beatles had, what, four of five categories to potentially get an award in.
The Grammys had 28 award categories in 1959 and 86 award categories this year. The number of categories fluctuates every year. It’s been as low as 28 and as high as 110. It’s been relatively stable in the low-mid 80’s for the past decade.
The Grammys are a confounding institution. Like you mentioned, there have been so many consolation prize Grammy’s awarded over the years to artists who are decades into their career yet still Grammy-less, it’s totally predictable. Just like the Oscar’s. I truly was surprised Abba didn’t win this year because they were the token group for this year. I’d like to think the Grammy’s mean something prestigious, but I stopped hoping that was the case and accepted reality about 25 years ago.
I stopped taking the Grammys seriously when Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” defeated “Losing My Religion” for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. R.E.M. is The Beatles to me.
If the category had been “Best Performance in an Engineered Duet,” that might have made more sense.
The awards shows have become to me like the Biblical quote I’m ad libbing.
“When I was I child, I played with childish things. When I became an adult, I put away the childish things.”
The awards ceremonies (Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony ) have become those to me.
I’ll read or watch somewhat disinterested and then move on with my life
knowing in the long run, it means little these days.