I’ve been saying for years that the Grammys – the award program for (basically) American popular music – don’t mean squat.

Every year they roll around again, and – again – I’ll have to say that they don’t mean squat.

Maybe I’m just getting old and crusty, but it seems as though each year reduces the relevance of these awards. While the same can be said – to a degree – about the Oscars, it’s the Golden Globes and other Oscar pretenders that are closer to the Grammys than the Oscars. The Oscars seem to try to reward on merit, not politics. (Yes, they fail miserably sometimes, but we all do…)

While all awards have political agendas and are, to a degree, popularity contests as much as a reward for skills/hard work and so on, the Grammys are probably the worst.

Take this year’s Grammys (presented on Feb. 8, 2004) – look at the awards granted.

Now, I’m not as wired into popular music as I was in the past, and my past wiring has always been incomplete, at best: My tastes are more eclectic, for better or for worse. I just like what I like, not what’s in high rotation at the Top40 stations.

Whatever.

But look at the awards:

I love Warren Zevon; I have liked Springsteen since the late 70s – Springsteen’s concert I saw at Cornell as part of his Darkness on the Edge of Town tour is still my all-time favorite concert.

But this collaborative work is, at best, fun and interesting.

It’s not award-winning, unless it was a pretty bad year for Rock Duos.

Or unless one of the award winners is dying now/died this past year…. Yep, Warren is gone with The Wind.

And look at other posthumous winners in other categories: Zevon again for Contemporary Folk album, Johnny and June Carter Cash for some other efforts.

I’m all for giving folks their due, and sometimes when one dies the music begins to emerge- and the masses begin to discover it for themselves (think John Lennon after he was shot; the rather sudden ascendancy of Peter Sellers as a comic genius after his death, and so on).

But come on. What about Emmy Lou Harris (sp?) – she had a great album this year, as did Lucinda Williams that probably should have beat out Cash. And – as I’ve written – the Zevon album was brave and poignant, but not even his best work (and he’s never really been Grammy material. While outlandish in his own way, he was not much for the recognition).

I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but for a body that gave some sort of major award to Milli Vanilli, well, need I say anything more??