Taking the Short Way to the Grammys

The timing and location were important: the eve of war, and overseas.

There is an American tradition that “politics stops at the water’s edge”, that an American speaks only as an American, not as a partisan of one side or the other, once he or she leaves America’s shores and makes a representation to the outside world, especially at war time. I’ve never appreciated the importance of that, since the outside world has full access to the partisan and dissenting opinions within America, and besides, Americans can say whatever the spirit moves them to, and opinions of the likes of the Dixie Chicks should be of no more significance than the two cents’ worth of any three people you’d land behind in a checkout line.

Also important was the sort of folks who tend to populate country music fandom: patriotic and traditionally-minded Americans. Some obscure punk group with an America-hating fan base wouldn’t have warranted mention if they had prattled on onstage about their disdain for the President, regardless of timing and location, or even four-lettered verbiage.

But, overseas and on the eve of war, the Dixie Chicks front-woman Natalie Maines remarked of her troupe’s “embarrassment” at hailing from the same state as the President -- which seems to me to be a quite superficial way of expressing opposition to a war policy -- and the country crowd didn’t exactly cotton to it. Now the Dixie Chicks have made practically a second career of their pity party/self-adulation, in song and film and interminable television appearances.

And then came the 2007 Grammy Awards.

The Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” is neither good music nor particularly popular, and it doesn’t qualify for recognition on some other grounds like “pioneering a new sound”, “influencing other artists”, or some such thing. It is musically plain and drab, and otherwise indulgent, narcissistic, bitter, humorless, petty, and preachy. But it somehow won the Grammy for “Best Song”, erasing any doubt about how these awards shows work.

The best song of the past year was certainly “Crazy”, by the new British pop outfit Gnarls Barkley. It stamped itself on the year in a way no other pop song came close to doing. It was hypnotic, a tour de force vocally, completely original and a stand-out from the typical fare, and wildly popular. The video was so influential that the Grammy Awards broadcast itself aped its Rorschach Test-style motif. And yet “Crazy” was not included among the nominees for Best Song. “Not Ready to Make Nice” made its dubious way onto the list, and took the easy, “Crazy”-free path to victory.

Despite its musical or creative deficiencies, “Not Ready to Make Nice” is laden with the sort of politics and partisanship which the good people of the entertainment business go for, and that evidently counts for quite a lot.

The best country album was clearly Carrie Underwood’s debut, Some Hearts. It was far and away the best-selling country album of the year and for half a decade (since the Dixie Chicks’ last pre-kerfuffle album, as it happens) , it has churned out no fewer than four Number 1 hits, and yet it was not included even as a nominee in the Best Country Album category. That the best-selling country album in years, with four tracks hitting Number 1, was excluded from the choices for Best Country Album of the year, must necessarily have been a conscious decision, not some oversight or plain tough luck. That conspicuous omission left the Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way with an open field, unmolested by any pesky competition, and it wasn’t such a long way after all to a second Grammy.

Grammy Awards winners are chosen by the music “industry” itself, from the musicians to the producers, who typically incline toward Dixie Chicks-politics, and their choice of the Dixie Chicks for Best Country Album and Best Song can only be taken as a political statement. Mouth the right politics and you might even pick up a Grammy or two, provided the Grammy masters prevent your stiffest competition from consideration alongside you.

The Grammys are a standard-bearer among the ridiculous, pompous, fraudulent awards shows; self-congratulatory, mutually-reinforcing, rarely meritocratic, and rarely able to recognize true greatness that makes the mistake of only doing well, not doing well by the sensitivities of the entertainment elite.

Oh, yes, and the Dixie Chicks’ acceptance speeches were the most indulgent and self-absorbed of the night. True to form.