Just When You Thought The Recording Academy Couldn’t Get It Worse
Bo Burnham made the most vital comedy record during the 2020-2021 eligibility year for the 2022 Grammys — yet the Recording Academy, for all of its big talk about making itself more responsive and relevant — said no to Bo, and moved him out of the Comedy Album category and into Music Film, where he lost to Questlove’s Oscar-winning Summer of Soul documentary. Never you mind that they didn’t actually release the soundtrack to that music film until this January, outside the eligibility window. Because that doesn’t matter at the Grammys.
Perhaps nothing matters?!
The Recording Academy says one thing to its voting members and all of us who actually buy and listen to records, and then historically keeps voting to reward musicians who make the old guard feel comfortable about their old, crusty ways. They will reward names they already know and love for their familiarity. And they will defend their old ways to the death, and sometimes afterward with posthumous praise.
I got into the longstanding problems with the Grammys and other performing arts awards just last week:
So yeah, of course, Louis CK won.
Louis Székely, the admitted sexual predator whose fans whined that he’d been victimized by the “cancel culture” of the #MeToo movement, came back from his banishment a year later and joked about the whole situation. And for that, he earned the biggest prize a comedian can receive from their peers at the Recording Academy.
Revealing once again what a sick joke “cancel culture” has been all along.
Comedians, comedy fans and reasonable people everywhere immediately rebelled on Twitter against the Grammys rewarding Louis CK, making him a trending topic throughout the entire three-and-a-half-hour telecast and even afterward.
Because the Recording Academy should feel some blowback on this.
What message does this send to all of Louis CK’s victims? What message does it send to other sexual predators in or out of the performing arts? What message does it send to young boys and girls?
What a travesty.
What a mockery of MeToo. It’s as if the Recording Academy not just took CK’s side of the story, but also agreed that the women he victimized suffered more from having a “brittle-ass spirit.” Because, oh yeah, that’s right, they gave Dave Chappelle the Grammy for Best Comedy Album for saying just that!
None of this is OK. Not for comedians. Not for women in comedy. Not for women anywhere. And yet society continues to stubbornly celebrate the people who comfort the old ways when powerful men didn’t have to worry about consequences. Celebrating them means they still don’t worry.
And sincerely, Sincerely wasn’t worthy of all this recognition as a comedy album on its merits, anyhow.
Video specials have run roughshod over actual albums in the Comedy category at the Grammys for several years now, as Grammy voters keep nominating Netflix (or in this case, Louis CK personally) over the hundreds of great audio recordings by stand-ups across America and the world. This is where I point out, too, that Sincerely Louis CK came out on video way back in April 2020, but CK didn’t get around to releasing an audio version of the special for sale on his website until almost a year later.
Per his email:
What I had to say about Sincerely when it premiered on his website in 2020; in part:
Louis Székely purposely makes it rather difficult for any of us to separate the art from the artist…
He either explicitly or implicitly presents multiple opportunities for self-reflection, more often than not choosing not to dive below the surface. In some instances, perhaps, a simple acknowledgement suffices. He can reveal fantasies about being mean in public, or how much he revels in transgressions: “I can’t stop doing it. I just. I like it. I like how it feels.” We can connect the dots ourselves. Or when he confides that his tour went global out of necessity, it’s self-explanatory: “I went to France last year, cause I thought I should leave the nation. Felt like a good idea. Would’ve left the planet if they had another one of those.”
Other times, the implication begs for more.
He jokingly imagines God holding a press conference to clear up so much confusion, yet himself has avoided all press since #MeToo came for him.
And yet. No matter how perverse or personal his comedy has been onstage or onscreen over the years, we’ve never seen his guard drop, never gotten too close to his truth.
CK could’ve gotten us back on his side, as Richard Pryor got us to laugh despite that legend’s own very public imperfections, yet has chosen to remain stubborn in his ways, for better or for worse. He released a subsequent special late last year, and Sorry to say, we’ll likely have to see and hear about him next year at the Grammys, too, as well as Chappelle for his most recently recorded rants about LGBTQ+ rights. Because the Recording Academy just can’t get out of its own way. Although Chappelle somehow didn’t win this year, as his Netflix YouTube performance about George Floyd got placed into the Spoken Word category, where it lost to Don Cheadle’s narration for “Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation From John Lewis.”
Bo didn’t go home completely empty-handed (if he attended). Burnham scored his first Grammy win, after all, as “All Eyes On Me” won Best Song Written for Visual Media.
And not quite a “fun fact,” but I remembered that the first time I met Bo Burnham in person, we were both….checks notes, yep…in the audience for Louis CK’s show at the Orpheum in Boston way back in 2009 when and where he recorded his “Hilarious” album.
Which just so happened to give CK his very first Grammy Award. Tonight marks his third Grammy for Comedy Album of the Year.
For the record, so to speak: I named Burnham’s Inside the top special of 2021, and Grammy-nominated Nate Bargatze third-best (my runner-up pick, Roy Wood Jr.’s Imperfect Messenger, was released too late for the 2022 Grammys). Of Inside, I said Burnham had produced…
Not only the best creative work I’ve seen about the pandemic, but also perhaps the best commentary on comedy and also on social media, all wrapped up in one. Bo Burnham basically hits the Venn diagram on this one. And of course, there are Venn diagrams and charts and graphs and so many musical bangers in this special that the Grammys didn’t know what to do with it. The Emmys knew to reward Burnham handsomely.
As the Grammy ballot stood, Bargatze should’ve won. That the Recording Academy invited Bargatze not only to announce nominations in November, but also present winners during the online pre-CBS ceremony on Sunday afternoon. That’s almost as good as winning, isn’t it? No. No, it is not.
Nate took to the stage wearing a helmet, declaring that’s the new safety rule for comedians making jokes at awards shows.
As comedian and Grammy host Trevor Noah joked during the primetime telecast, at least Bargatze and all of the other Grammy-nominated losers still have all their money?!
If only that helped all of the comedians getting ripped off by streaming platforms and their record labels. Ahem. Cough. Cough.
From The Comic's Comic 
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