2019 Grammy Awards: Award Reactions and Thoughts

Hey guys! As you know, the 61^st Annual Grammy Awards took place last night. It was definitely an interesting night, so I want to be able to talk about it. My review of the evening will come in two posts. This first post will be my thoughts on the award winners in the categories that I care about. Then later this week, I'll have a post where I talk about the performances. But that will be later in the week because the performances are not up on YouTube yet as I'm typing this and I need to rewatch them if possible before I can evaluate them.


Basically in this post, I'll start with the minor awards and then slowly progress until we get to the three big ones. Once again, these are only the awards that I personally care about. I'm not going through every single one because I just don't have that kind of time and I don't know a lot of what was nominated for the awards I'm not discussing. So the categories I'll be focusing on are general, pop, rap, and country. Some I'll have more to say than others. But we can just get right into it and I'll begin with the country awards.


I don't have a lot to say about the country awards in general, but I am happy with the winners. We had four country awards and Kacey Musgraves took home three of the four. She and Childish Gambino won the most overall with four awards each. I am very happy for her because after listening to the gem that is Golden Hour, I realized just how incredibly talented she is as a singer and a songwriter. Butterflies won Best Country Solo Performance and Space Cowboy won Best Country Song, both of which I think are great songs. And obviously, Golden Hour won Best Country Album because it's the only country album that was nominated for Album of the Year, which I'll get to at the end. She beat out Chris Stapleton, who was the big winner in country last year. I'm very happy that she won because she is very talented and Golden Hours shows that. The only other country award was Best Country Duo/Group Performance, which went to Dan + Shay for Tequila. I'm very happy that they won because as you guys know, I love the song and Dan + Shay in general. It was very deserving.


Moving on to the rap awards, we once again have four awards in this category. The first is Best Rap Performance, which was apparently a tie. I don't know if that has ever happened in Grammys history. But it doesn't make very much sense to me. The award went to both King's Dead from Black Panther and Bubblin by Anderson .Paak. I don't know why the Recording Academy couldn't just pick one, but congrats to both I guess. Regarding Best Rap/Sung Performance, the award went to Childish Gambino for This Is America. I do like the song and what it stands for, but I feel like All The Stars by Kendrick Lamar and SZA got robbed. Not only do I think the song is better, but I feel like it was rapped and sung better. This Is America I though was a strange choice when it was first nominated because it's the odd one out in the sense that it's the only nomination by a solo artist (even though the song has background vocals from other people). I do like the song, I just thought All The Stars was more deserving for this category. But moving on to Best Rap Song, God's Plan by Drake took home the award, which is the first time I've seen Drake win a televised award in a long time if ever. The other nominees that I know consisted of King's Dead, Sicko Mode by Travis Scott, and Lucky You by Eminem and Joyner Lucas. I personally think Sicko Mode and Lucky You are better songs. I always kind of found God's Plan overrated even though it is a perfectly good song. But considering that this was somehow nominated for Song of the Year, I shouldn't be surprised. Finally, Best Rap Album went to Cardi B for Invasion Of Privacy. This is one of the awards that was televised and at the time, I thought there was a slight chance the award would go to Mac Miller. But I'm not too shocked it went to Cardi B. Invasion Of Privacy is not a bad album by any means. There are some great songs, but there are shitty ones as well, so it evens out. I thought Astroworld by Travis Scott was better. But the Grammys like Cardi B, so it went to her.


Regarding the pop awards, there are three here that I was interested in. Best Pop Solo Performance went to Lady Gaga for her song Joanne (Where Do You Think You're Goin'?). I did not think this would win, but I'm glad it did. I thought the live version of Havana would've gotten it. But Joanne is the better song in my opinion, so I'm happy for Lady Gaga. But she also took home Best Pop/Duo Group Performance for Shallow with Bradley Cooper. I like a lot of the nominees except for The Middle, but I knew Shallow was the front runner, even though I personally wanted the award to go to Say Something. I'm still happy for Lady Gaga because Shallow is an amazing song that deserves all of its success. But then Best Pop Vocal Album went to Ariana Grande for Sweetener. I did not love that album for the most part. It felt bland to me. As far as the other nominees go, Reputation was not a good album and the others ranged from okay to good. I would've loved to have seen it go to Shawn Mendes or P!nk. But Ariana's win is not something I find surprising in any way.


And finally we have the general category. Best New Artist went to Dua Lipa, which I'm not very surprised about. I do not know who Jorja Smith or Margo Price are and I don't particularly care for Chloe x Halle, Greta Van Fleet, or H.E.R. My personal favorite from the list was Bebe Rexha even though she's far from a new artist. But I am happy for Dua Lipa because she is very talented and has some good songs. I could tell she was emotional when she won the award. So I'm happy for her and I thought she deserved it.


Song of the Year ended up going to This Is America by Childish Gambino. I was like 90% sure the award was going to go to Shallow. But consider me surprised. I didn't think This Is America stood a chance for some reason, but it does make sense now. My assumption every year is that Song of the Year gets awarded to the song with the best songwriting, hence why all of the songwriters are credited. This Is America is a very well-written song, so it's win makes sense even though I personally don't think it's that great of a song. I would've preferred if the award went to Shallow, All The Stars, or In My Blood by Shawn Mendes. But honestly, I'm glad the award didn't go to God's Plan, Boo'd Up by Ella Mai, or The Middle. Those were the first three that I ruled out immediately because there's just nothing special about any of them lyrically. This Is America at least has a good message, even if it does almost entirely live off of its music video.


Then we have Record of the Year, which also went to Childish Gambino for This Is America. This one I'm not as okay with because while the song has a good message, it's musically not that great and I can see why people would not like it. I'm still happy this won over The Middle, God's Plan, and I Like It, but I feel like All The Stars was robbed. That was my original guess for what would win, and then later I thought I Like It stood a chance. I did not imagine This Is America winning again. But All The Stars is the better song, or at least in my opinion. I would've even been okay with Shallow winning because it was well-produced. But overall, I don't think This Is America was deserving of it and I think it winning Song of the Year was enough.


And finally, the moment we've all been waiting for. It is time for Album of the Year, which went to none other than Kacey Musgraves for Golden Hour! I just want to say that this is the first time since Random Access Memories that the Grammys got Album of the Year right. There was some stiff competition this year with Invasion Of Privacy, Beerbongs & Bentleys, Scorpion, and the Black Panther soundtrack. H.E.R., Janelle Monáe, and Brandi Carlile were also nominated, although I didn't think they stood much of a chance. At some point in the show, I started thinking that Invasion Of Privacy could win and I had hopes that Kacey Musgraves would pull through and she did. Golden Hour rightfully won Album of the Year. I only just recently listened to the full album and I totally see why critics loved it because each song was so well-written and she has a really nice voice. This is definitely one of the best albums I've heard in a while and I'm so happy it got what it deserved. This makes up for last year when Lorde got snubbed because of Bruno Mars. Golden Hour was ahead of every other album nominated in terms of quality by a clear mile and it shows that the Grammys are all about quality and not just popularity. I know when I was looking through Instagram posts congratulating Musgraves, people in the comments just kept asking who she is and some people were annoyed that Cardi B didn't win. Others found it weird that Musgraves won despite not being "relevant". But news flash, the Grammys awards songs and albums based on quality, as they very much should. Just because something wasn't as popular doesn't mean it's any less qualified for Album of the Year and that was shown in the 2015 Grammys when Beck won for Morning Phase. Kacey Musgraves deserved this award 100 percent because Golden Hour is a fantastic album. I know it's been around for almost a year now, but I feel like I have to write an album review for it. So we'll see if I end up being motivated enough to do that because I would love to have the opportunity to praise Golden Hour. It's just such a great album and I'm so happy it won. It's easily the best win of the night.



So yeah. Those were my thoughts on the major awards. Later this week, I should have another Grammy-related post where I discuss the performances. And then hopefully soon, I'll do an album review for Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves on top of the year-end posts I'm behind on. There's just so much I want to do on this site. But that's all I have for you guys today. Let me know what you guys thought of the awards in the comments down below and I will see you guys again later this week.