A monument to irrelevance: the decline and fall of music award shows

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The Grammy Awards have become a masterclass in missing the point.

Year after year, music’s biggest night proves itself to be less about artistic excellence and more about maintaining the status quo of the music industry's power players. The 67th annual ceremony, held last weekend, was perhaps the most egregious example yet of this time-honored and tone-deaf tradition.

Case in point: The Rolling Stones won Best Rock Album for their 2023 release Hackney Diamonds and The Beatles won Best Rock Performance for "Now And Then," an AI-assisted song which, in my opinion, is a bummer of a note to go out on for arguably the greatest band of all time.

Of course, these bands are legendary architects of rock and roll, their legacies carved in stone. But in 2025, up against the raw urgency of IDLES, the poetic fury of Fontaines D.C., or the ever-innovative Jack White, a legacy artist win isn’t just a misstep—it’s proof of the Grammys’ irrelevance. Their commitment to playing it safe overshadows any p…