Nathan's column: Following the Grammys from afar

Talk about it

The 2013 awards season continued Sunday with the airing of the Grammy Awards, and I’ll admit I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I tuned in just long enough to see Carrie Underwood sing a song while someone showed a filmstrip on her dress, and to see Minnesota’s favorite tiny musical name-changer present an award to that Australian guy who sang a song while covered with paint.

I think I lost interest in the whole production sometime last week when word got out that CBS had sent a memo to Grammy attendees asking them to “be sure that buttocks and female breasts are adequately covered.” Apparently male breasts are A-OK, though.

The memo also declares “thong type costumes” to be “problematic” and asks that everyone “please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack” and declares that “bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is problematic.”

I tend to disagree with that last statement, but leave it to a television network to make the description of under curvature sound so unappealing.

So, no, I was not a participant in Grammy night. At least not directly.

That’s the great thing about the modern world, though. I don’t have to actually watch an awards show to know what’s happening. I can fire up Twitter and see what the people I know and the people I followed for reasons I no longer remember have to say about what’s going on.

Based on Sunday night’s Twitter feed, there were some questionable dresses, on display Grammy night. Some of the presenters were awkward. A few of the performances were good while others were lame. Although, it’s possible I was just reading the feed from last month’s Golden Globes. Or last year’s Grammy’s. Or … you know, it’s not really important.

This isn’t unique to awards shows. Follow Twitter during Tuesday’s State of the Union and you could see plenty of comments about pastel ties, or how much water Marco Rubio was drinking during the Republican response. Clearly we like to focus on the important details.

Whatever you think of the Grammy’s it’s clear they have a vital place in the music industry. Just as the Golden Globes serve as an indicator of who might win big at the Academy Awards later this month, the Grammy’s let us know what songs people will complain about winning Grammy’s.

Grammy night is also an opportunity for the record industry to pretend, at least for one night, that online distribution and easier promotion for bands through social media isn’t completely changing the music industry. It’s a way to say, “If we were really increasingly irrelevant, then would we be able to throw this super-sweet party and have Taylor Swift sing and make it rain on stage for no reason? I didn’t think so!”

When you think about it, they’ve got a pretty compelling argument. I’ve thrown tons of parties, and Taylor Swift never even RSVPs.

Maybe I need to send out a memo. Thong-type costumes are welcome! Male bosoms are not!

Tags: opinion, rosemount, commentaries