2008 Grammy Nominations

Here are the 2008 nominations for Grammy awards. (For people in the Old World, the Grammys are American music awards that are given out by critics to music that isn't necessarily popular, well-liked, or good. Some of them are one or more of the three, but I suspect that that's mostly an accident. Truth be told, there are always a few high radio-airplay songs in the list if for no other reason than because there would probably be rather violent riots if Kanye West weren't nominated for something.)

It has now been close to two decades since there was much overlap at all between the music I like and the newfangled stuff being played on the radio (there are always a few notable exceptions) and more than 90% of the songs nominated for some award to which I have listened (and I am counting sounds when I have only heard a part of them rather than the whole thing --- I can thank a commercial for that one) come from one of two albums: An Ancient Muse by Loreena McKennitt (nominated for best contemporary world music album) and Beauty & Crime by Suzanne Vega (which was nominated for some sort of album engineering award). I also recognize a few songs as covers of songs I know, though I haven't technically heard the nominated versions of them. I've heard of many of the artists who were nominated, but there were still a rather large number of unfamiliar names.

So why am I blogging about this? First, I relished the chance to write the snarky first paragraph above. Second --- and this is the reason I was curious enough to check the nominations in the first place --- a mathematician was nominated for his role in helping restore a Woody Guthrie recording. That's really cool!