Ah, music. Remember that stuff? Long, long ago in the Before Times, when nobody knew what coronaviruses or Faucis were, people would gather together with special tools called “instruments” and make various sounds that could be pleasing to the ear and mind. We called these groups of people “bands,” and some of them were pretty good! Not usually, but every once in a while. A few of them figured out how to assemble those sounds into artifacts called “songs,” and the ability to craft these artifacts was highly prized in our society. An entire industry was built around this process, and it was capable of producing songs of great power and beauty. It wasn’t perfect, because nothing ever is, but it was alive. It inspired and moved people. Mankind sang light into the darkness, and our children grew up knowing that we small, fragile creatures could transcend our mortal bodies and touch the hand of eternity.
Now we have this.
This is what we have.
But all is not lost! As science-lovers know, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Valerie Richardson, Washington Times:
Not even the most sexually explicit show in Grammy Awards history could turn out the viewers.
The 63rd annual awards ceremony that aired Sunday on CBS was on pace to hit a ratings low with a time-zone-adjusted audience of 8.8 million, according to CBS Entertainment. That’s a 53% drop from the 18.7 million who tuned in to last year’s program…
Two weeks ago, the 78th annual Golden Globes hit a 13-year low with 6.9 million viewers, a 63% drop from 2020, when 18.4 million watched.
If you punish people long enough, they will seek relief.
The ratings dropped just over 50%! For every two people who watched the Grammys last year, slightly less than one of them watched this year. Out of every 100 people, 53 just walked out of the room and found something better to do, all across the country. That doesn’t seem good, at least not for the Grammys.
A lot of people are outraged by whatever that Cardi B debacle was supposed to be, but it just bored me. Awkward and embarrassing. And it’s hardly anything new. Madonna was writhing around onstage like that 40 years ago. The difference is you can actually remember her songs more than five minutes after hearing them. It was all garbage, but at least there was some songcraft involved.
Holy crap, I never thought I’d be nostalgic for Madonna.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m an old man, things were better back in my day, you kids get off my lawn, etc. Sure, there’s that. But you can’t tell me what you just watched is even as good as, say, Hoobastank or Britney Spears or whatever else we used to consider unlistenable. We had no idea what was coming. We were so naive.
It doesn’t help that network ratings are plummeting across the board. Maybe we’ve just suffered enough over the past year, and yet another Grammys was the last straw. The American public has plenty of other options on a Sunday night, or any other night. When you’ve got a century’s worth of entertainment available at a moment’s notice with the click of a button, why would you want to watch an overweight stripper who’s always yelling about her genitals?
But you know me, Dear Reader. I’m an incurable optimist. I live in hope that among the 8.8 million people who watched the repugnant spectacle of the 2021 Grammys, a few were so shocked and repulsed that they’re now determined to make their own music. Something that isn’t… that. Maybe this will bring about a renaissance. Maybe the Grammys had to destroy the village in order to save it.
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