It happened again on Monday night. The “safe,” establishment candidate—Taylor Swift’s 1989—beat the hipper, more adventurous choice—Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly—to take the Grammy for Album of the Year.
This has been a recurring storyline at the Grammys since 1966, when a two-disk recap of Frank Sinatra’s past triumphs, A Man and His Music, beat The Beatles’ Revolver.
But a major rule change regarding membership at the Recording Academy increases the odds that in the future the hipper choice may actually win.
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In the past, you needed six credits to join the Recording Academy. A vocalist needed to perform on six released tracks. An album-notes writer needed to write the notes for six released albums. And so on, for all types of music professionals. Those six credits used to gain you membership for life (pending paying of annual dues). Now, as I understand this change, those six credits gain you membership for five years, after which you have to supply evidence of (presumably) six new credits from the past five years.
So the Recording Academy will check to see that its members are still currently working in the industry every five years. That’s even more aggressive than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which will check every 10 years.
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