This September, NBC will air the inaugural “People’s Choice Country Awards.” What, having them as part of the regular People’s Choice Awards isn’t good enough any more? Or aren’t the CMAs, the ACMs, and the CMTs, not to mention the country categories in the Grammys and the iHeartRadio awards, enough?
Coming up next: the East 34th Street Ladies’ Tuesday Afternoon Social Club, Boxing Federation, and Country Music Association (“because you can never have too many boxing world titles or country music awards shows”) Country Music Awards - the only awards show that realizes what is really important; the entire show consists of performances, and then, over the closing credits, we flash the URL for the website where we actually announce the winners, although we know there are only two kinds of awards shows; the ones that agree with the speaker, which confirms that the speaker knows more about country music than anybody within earshot, and those where the winners must have been chosen by internal politics of some sort because the fact that they disagreed from the speaker means that talent obviously had nothing to do with it.
I think that was one of those Bob Bain-produced awards shows, like the Teen Choice Awards, where some mysterious panel chooses the nominees, and the producers choose the winner, with the only rule being that it cannot be the nominee in that category with the fewest votes. (A lot better than the earliest TCAs, where one of the things taken into consideration when choosing the winners was, “How likely is the winner to show up in person to accept their award?”.)
Which was also the secret to the Kids Choice Awards on Nick, which is why for most of its run only people who already had working contracts with Nick mysteriously always won.
I’m not a fan of any of that sort of music, but I think that Dolly Parton is an amazing person so will hijack with a mention of her Imagination Library.. She used her money to set up a foundation to send free books to preschoolers. This isn’t as well known as it should be, so shout it out and if anyone reading this has young children, sign them up.
Awards shows aren’t about who deserves the awards, they’re about drawing attention to the entertainment industry. If another awards show will draw more attention, there shall be another awards show.
What is perhaps a more interesting discussion is why country music is an entirely separate category from everything else. At the Grammys (or American Music Awards, Junos, Brits, whatever) they celebrate “popular music,” which ropes in rock, pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz, metal, techno, and several other genres. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you will see the Beatles enshrined next to Metallica, Madonna, Fleetwood Mac, the Talking Heads, and NWA. By any objective measure NWA and the Beatles aren’t any more similar than NWA and Waylon Jennings, or the Beatles are to Garth Brooks, and yet there’s this weird divide there.
In terms of popularity, country music probably has the largest, for lack of a better way of saying it, “dedicated fan base.” Rock and Pop both break down into different genres, but for the most part, “Country is Country” (bluegrass notwithstanding). Networks will show what they think the most people want to watch. I am a little surprised that, while there is a “Latin Grammys,” there is no “Country Grammys” yet. (I have some idea why there are no Rock & Roll Grammys; too many of its fans would laugh at the idea that the Recording Academy in general would know who deserves the awards.)
As for why there are so many divergent music types in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, most, if not all, of them are in as “influencers” of rock & roll.
Too many. For some odd reason I watched (well, mostly fast forwarded) the CMT show last night. Looks like everyone else here had the good sense to stay away. Here is my comprehensive review: it sucked, and it wasn’t country.
Visually, the stage was pretty cool. So there’s that.