PopEater - When it comes to showbiz's biggest awards -- Oscars, Grammys, Emmys -- someone is bound to get left in the dust. Each category only gets five nominees, after all, so snubs are expected. But this year's Grammy nominations came complete with a glaring and epic fail: The recording academy forgot to nominate Lady Gaga's awesome 'Bad Romance' for either Song of the Year or Record of the Year.
And, well, we think that's pretty much blasphemy!
'Bad Romance' was one of the biggest and most acclaimed songs of the year. It reached No. 1 in 19 countries, spent 29 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and has sold over 4 million digital downloads in the U.S. In January, the track's ubiquity was cemented when Nielsen Soundscan announced that it had set the record for most weekly plays in the 17-year history of Billboard's Pop Songs radio airplay tally.
There's also the epic video, which earlier this year won seven MTV Video Music Awards and has been viewed about 314 million times on YouTube -- a tally that helped Gaga take down Justin Bieber to become the first artist in history to top 1 billion views on the popular video sharing site.
While the Grammys certainly aren't intended as a popularity contest, 'Bad Romance' is a legitimately great song and deserved to be recognized. It may not be lyrically complex, but it's absolutely infectious – admit it, you know every single word, and isn't that a hallmark of good songwriting? – and the whole thing is swaddled in a "ferocious" beat that, per MTV, "stays at a low boil for most [of the song] ... rising up in an ecstatic, Erasure-esque throb during the chorus."
It's a song that, according to Rolling Stone, "makes [Gaga's] name a Teutonic chant."
And lest we forget, she of the meat dress differs from many of her contemporaries -- hello, Katy Perry -- in that she writes and produces (often with collaborators) all of her own tunes. Song of the Year is a writer's prize, while Record of the Year celebrates the artist, producers and engineers of a particular track. On virtually all of her songs, Gaga is both a songwriter and a producer, so why not give her a little love where it counts? Yes, her vocal performance on 'Bad Romance' is certainly worth celebrating, as the Grammys rightly did with a nod for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, but what about all the behind-the-scenes work that went in to making it a monster hit? It didn't write or produce itself.
But don't take our word for it that a crime against popular music has been committed (we admit we have a hard time being objective when it comes to Gaga) -- most major music critics expected it would be nominated for both prizes too.
Over at GoldDerby, which tracks and predicts the nominees for the biggest awards in music, film and television, each of its pundits not only selected 'Bad Romance' as a contender for Record of the Year, every single one chose it as their top pick for the prize. (Incidentally, they were correct about three of the five nominees for the award.)
http://www.popeater.com/2010/12/02/l...e-grammy-snub/
I am equally surprised.
I âm so unhappy about it!!!
