Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar have been nominated in various categories for the Grammys. Image courtesy: AFP
When the Grammy Awards unfurls its list of nominees every December, it's one of those high-viscosity news items that travels fast, especially in uncertain times. It's a pompy declaration that satisfies our least imaginative hunches, giving us an opportunity to say "I knew it!" when we don't really know anything anymore. (Also Read:
Grammys 2016: Kendrick Lamar Storms Nominations, Taylor Swift Trails)
So on Monday morning, we knew it. Taylor Swift had been nominated for three of the most-coveted Grammys, including album of the year for
1989, her quintuple-platinum, consciousness-devouring fifth album.
Then there was that other thing that we only sort-of knew:
To Pimp a Butterfly, a cerebral and virtuosic offering from California rapper Kendrick Lamar, had been nominated for album of the year, too. On top of that, Kendrick Lamar had earned the most nominations overall with 11. This was a surprise.
And at an awards show that has long been bloated with too many trophies - an insensible 83 categories in all - that's the tidy, binary narrative we should expect to take hold over the next two months: Taylor versus Kendrick, two very different pop stars whose albums have filled our psychic airspace with two very different portraits of American life.
Taylor Swift's America according to
1989: Falling out of love is complicated, loyal friends are rare, New York City is Oz for white people, and when society turns your private life into gossip, you must do your best to shake it off, shake it off.
Kendrick Lamar's America according to
To Pimp A Butterfly: Celebrity is complicated, the police are corrupt, this country is a nightmare for black people, and when society tries to annihilate your humanity, you must tell yourself that we gon' be alright.
Grammys voters tend to cast their ballots for music that feels comfortingly familiar, unabashedly populist, socially righteous and commercially successful - and fans have heard complex combinations of all of those things in both
1989 and
To Pimp A Butterfly. So it should be interesting to see if and how Taylor Swift and Kendrick attempt to stoke voter excitement between now and the big night.
Working a crowd is one of Taylor Swift's many gifts. Back in October, while the Grammy ballots were still being drafted, a story went up about how she handled losing 2014's album of the year prize to the French robots of Daft Punk. Here's how Taylor handled it: She skipped the parties and went straight home to shed a few tears. Here's the message she was sending to Grammys voters: Please don't make me cry again, you heartless scoundrels, thank you.
Kendrick Lamar plays the game, too. He never appeared more compromised than he did up on the Grammy stage back in 2014 when he was shoe-horned into a nonsensical duet with Imagine Dragons, a Las Vegas rock band of astounding mediocrity. But what the Grammy machine wants, the Grammy machine gets - from artists who are eager to win Grammys, anyway.
And when the 58th Grammy Awards take place in Los Angeles on February 15, we might see Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar playing the game together. In May, Kendrick Lamar put an odd smudge on his remarkable year by rapping awkwardly over a remix of Taylor Swift's summer-owning single
Bad Blood. Seven months later, the collaboration is up for the best pop duo/group performance and best music video Grammys.
If these two end up performing it together on Grammy night, at least we'll be able to say, "I knew it."