9 Times The Grammy Awards Chose Its Metal Poorly
Gold in the wrong hands...
To whittle down a year’s worth of musical accomplishments to a list of five selections per genre is presumably daunting, though it would seem that the Recording Academy takes pride each year in making the Grammy Awards a shining example of the dwindling legitimacy of award shows wherein they typically lob several of the golden phonograph statues at individuals we’ll forget about in the coming year while finding new reasons to give awards to artists like Beyonce.
That is not to say Beyonce isn’t deserving of whatever accolades she may have at this point in her career, but… seriously? Best Rock Performance nominee?
Rarely one to be anywhere but beneath the wheels of the mainstream bullet train, heavy metal has been consistently snubbed by and/or misrepresented in the Grammy Awards, effectively showing that the Academy has their fingers far from the oft polyrhythmic pulse of the eternal dark horse.
Though changes have been made in recent years to the voting process and this year’s winner in Megadeth is long overdue, there were still times the Recording Academy recognized the wrong artists as nominees and/or winners.
9. 1989: Jethro Tull- Crest Of A Knave
While most of the entries on this list boil down to preference and bias, this is one of the few wins universally acknowledged as a travesty. 1989 was the first year the Grammy Awards acknowledged heavy metal, including it alongside Hard Rock under the category “Best Hard Rock / Heavy Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental.”
Metallica’s “And Justice For All” was the heavy favorite going into the show, up against Jane’s Addiction “Nothing Shocking,” AC/DC’s “Blow Up Your Video,” Iggy Pop’s “Cold Metal” and Jethro Tull’s “Crest of a Knave,” the last of which taking home the award that evening despite being the least appropriate for the nomination.
The controversy from this upset was enough to warrant a separation of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal into different categories and upon winning the award the following year for “One,” Metallica thanked Jethro Tull for not releasing another album during that time.