Grammy Awards Re-Embrace Popular Music

When I was a kid my family lived in Hawaii for three years, from the time I was eight-and-a-half until I was eleven-and-a-half. I was a little too young to appreciate the 50th state’s great surfing and abundance of grass-skirted hula girls (okay, those were mostly seen on trips to the airport in Honolulu), but I did enjoy the perfect weather, fresh pineapples and televised sumo wrestling matches.

One of the qualities you have to adopt when you live in Hawaii is a fierce independence. The state is so isolated out there in the middle of the Pacific that its citizenry must fend for itself for most of its perishables. On the island of Oahu we had our own dairies, bread factories and soda pop bottling plants. I know this because my school’s field trip itinerary included visits to all of them. While older visitors to Hawaii were visiting Waikiki and Diamond Head, we fifth graders were taking trips to see chocolate cupcakes roll down the assembly line at Love’s Bakery.

The Dixie Chicks scored big at the Grammy Awards this week winning Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year awards.

The spirit of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 filled the 49th Annual Grammy Awards as popular music reclaimed its share of the statuettes.

Hawaiians also have to fend for themselves when it comes to their entertainment choices. In addition to the aforementioned late night sumo wrestling (on the island’s Japanese TV channel), we had a thriving American-style professional wrestling program and our own minor league baseball team, the Hawaii Islanders, which played teams from Phoenix, Tacoma and other second-tier west coast cities.

Hawaii’s unique isolation also served as an incubator for one the best radio scenes in broadcast history. Without competition from neighboring states, Hawaii’s radio stations filled the AM and FM airwaves with all manner of music, from traditional Asian folk songs and symphonies to the latest in underground rock and roll.

One of the stations I listened to was KPOI, a typical “top of the pops” radio outlet located in Honolulu. This was back in the day when the best selling singles of the day included The Beatles’ “Come Together” and Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World”—songs that helped bridge the gap between 60s pop and 70s rock.

Every Sunday morning, KPOI would air the syndicated radio program American Top 40, hosted by disc jockey extraordinaire Casey Kasem. The show was my link to the continental 48 states, and I probably missed hearing AT40 only a handful of times in the three years we lived in Hawaii. Every Sunday I would pull out my trusty yellow legal pad and write down each song and its position in the Top 40. If I was feeling particularly industrious, I would make graphs showing how a particular song was either heading toward number one (“with a bullet!”), or, conversely, getting ready to be jettisoned into that no man’s land that starts with the 41st most popular song in the country.

35 years later, I am still obsessed with music, as is Casey Kasem, now in his seventies. These days, however, my musical tastes run a bit outside the Top 40 and my CD collection contains discs by relatively obscure artists such as My Brightest Diamond, Clem Snide, the Ditty Bops and Michael Franti—in addition to the requisite albums by The Beatles, the Stones and the Who.

So, to catch up with what these crazy kids are listening to these days, I watched the 49th Annual Grammy Awards Sunday evening. Here are some of my observations on the state of popular music as viewed through the Grammy microscope.

In case you haven’t noticed it, there are some really talented young singers who are nudging their way into the spotlight these days. Perhaps it was Norah Jones winning eight Grammys three years ago for her debut album that has inspired all these youthful singers. Who knows? Whatever the reason, singers such as Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, John Mayer, Corinne Bailey Rae and others are really coming into their own. And they’re not relying on dance moves and big production numbers to get noticed like young performers did at the Grammys just a few years back. No, these guys can actually sing.

Speaking of singers, that big guy Cee-Lo from Gnarls Barkley can really roar. Listening to his magnificent falsetto is as sweet as a trip to a songbird aviary and the song “Crazy” is deserving of all of its current accolades.

Unfortunately, “Crazy” and that new blues number John Mayer unveiled at the Grammys were about the only two new songs performed that night that could be called memorable. Corinne Bailey Rae is a true talent but needs to display some variety of range and tempo with her original material. And James Blunt’s song “You’re Beautiful” had become a parody of itself through over-exposure by the time he actually sang it at the Grammy Awards.

No, most of the real highlights of the show happened when the new stars sang older songs such as Carrie Underwood taking on Texas swing with the old Bob Wills chestnut “San Antonio Rose” or Christina Aguilera belting out James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World.” Of course reviving a great old song is no guarantee of success, as the country-rock outfit Rascal Flatts aptly demonstrated. Their earnest recreations of The Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane” and “Hotel California” (with note-for-note imitations of Joe Walsh’s lead guitar lines) sounded like guys in a high school rock band playing covers for their friends.

In case you missed it, the big winner at the 49th Grammys was the Texas trio The Dixie Chicks, who walked away from the podium at the end of the evening with five major awards for their album Taking the Long Way. The album, with its signature song, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” was the band’s answer to its many country radio critics after the dust-up created by Natalie Maines’ derogatory comments about fellow Texan George W. Bush. Three years ago, radio stations were boycotting the band and holding pep rallies to burn their CDs. It turns out that freedom of speech is an American value stronger than censorship. Who knew?

Although it was not part of the televised portion of the Grammys, local legend Doc Watson won his eighth award Sunday night. Watson and Asheville-based guitarist Bryan Sutton won the Best Country Instrumental Performance category for the tune “Whiskey Before Breakfast” from Sutton’s superb 2006 album Not Too Far from the Tree.

After years of appearing out of touch with what people are truly listening to, the Grammys are back. Any organization that can honor Doc Watson, Gnarls Barkley, Wolfmother and John Mayer in the same evening must be doing something right.