The Grammys is an award ceremony meant to honor musicians across the music industry for their work.

Every year I watch this awards ceremony and every year I think The Grammys are the most irrelevant thing in the music industry.

It is an award show meant to honor achievement for great music, but it is nothing more than a popularity contest for mainstream artists.

2014 was an incredible year of music with releases from artists such as The Hotelier, Manchester Orchestra, and Run the Jewels, to just name a few.

However, these artists and dozens of others are nowhere to be found in any of the 83 categories at the awards ceremony.

Instead, National Academy of Recordings Arts and Sciences nominated things such as “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift and “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor for their category for “Song of the Year.”

These songs are supposed to represent the best of the best for the year of 2014, and the best the NARAS could come up with were songs such as these.

This goes to show that The Grammys is not showcasing the best of what is available in the music industry.

They are showcasing what is most popular and handing out awards to mainstream artists.

Each category of The Grammys only allows for five nominations, and with so many genres of music and everyone having different tastes in music, it is difficult to narrow something like “Album of the Year” or “Song of the Year” to only five options.

With limited space to choose, the NARAS is not going to hand out an award to an unknown or independent artist.

They are going to handout the award to a mainstream artist with extreme popularity which makes the award meaningless. 

If the NARAS truly wanted to honor musicians for achievement in music, they would at least attempt to find artists that are worthy of the award or at least a nomination.

I find it difficult to take an award ceremony, especially one celebrating achievement in music, seriously when they nominate a song such as “Blurred Lines,” a song which promoted rape culture, for their 2013 “Record of the Year.”

Winning a Grammy is meaningless and does not prove anything in the music industry.

To be a Grammy award winning artist only means to be a mainstream artist on a major label that gets way too mush radio play, and nothing else.

Chris Picazo can be reached at [email protected] or 581-2812.