I’ve been a big Rush fan for a long time, and although I understand that their sound isn’t for everybody, I rarely run into someone who doesn’t think YYZ is a great song. Not to mention that the bass playing is awesome.
Anyway, for a long time I knew that YYZ lost to an instrumental by The Police in the grammy’s way back when. It wasn’t until recently that I bothered to look up the song, and not until last week that I happened to find out I had it on my iPod. So I played it, expecting something pretty darned amazing - after all, it beat out YYZ.
thump… thump thump… thump…thump thump…
Thats it!? Thats all this song is made of, a repetitive riff that goes on and on for 3 minutes? There’s not even a variation on a theme in the whole damn song! Granted the guitar part sounds kinda cool, but again - its the same thing over and over with no variations.
Police also won it the year before, and Sting won it two years later. And the Chemical Brothers won it for “Block Rockin’ Beats”. I guess samples don’t count as lyrics?
Yep, some pretty minor efforts from major names there. And if I’m not mistaken, the very first winner, Paul McCartney’s “Rockestra Theme,” does have at least one line of lyrics.
What’s the big deal? The Grammies have made more stupid choices than. It took them over a decade to recognize Bob Dylan (not counting “The Concert for Bangla Desh,” in which he just happened to catch the wave). In 1978, they passed over Chris Rea, The Cars, Toto, and Elvis Costello to give best new artist to A Taste of Honey (“Boogie Ooogie Oogie”), a group that anyone with an IQ over ten could see had the staying power of a mayfly.
Grammy voters are completely out of touch with what’s going on with music. They’ve been noticeably older than the music audience since rock n’ roll came in. The number of wretched choices made by the Grammies could fill a book the size of the phone directory.