Double Fantasy producer Jack Douglas had been the engineer on Imagine and the engineering assistant on Yoko's Fly in 1971. Later in the '70s, he made his name producing Aerosmith's records, but he also worked with Patti Smith and Cheap Trick. I wonder which job really impressed John & Yoko so much that they suddenly wanted him back. Did they ask him to give them that Aerosmith sound? I guess not. I am surprised that Al Jarreau broke into the Album of the Year group instead of Grover Washington and Bill Withers; Withers and his co-writers had to settle for just the Best R&B Song, while Washington took home a Best Jazz Fusion award. But, "Just the Two of Us" and Winelight were huge that year--and really stayed in AC radio rotation for several years. I know that I heard it a lot when I was in the car with my parents. The Police and Pat Benatar remained stuck in the Rock Grammys pen together for the second year in a row; Dolly Parton still could not break out of the Country corral, although she was nomined for Song of the Year and Original Score for "9 to 5." Also, no Grammys for "Arthur's Theme," even while it was winning an Oscar and a Golden Globe that season. Al Jarreau not only won a Jazz Vocal award, but he beat out Cross, Withers, Lennon, and James Ingram for the Pop - Best Male Vocal trophy, too. Did his people pass out favors like candy that year, or what? Maybe Quincy pulled some strings for him. Most of my favorite albums from 1981 are jazz records--and the Grammy winners by Gerry Mulligan, Chick Corea & Gary Burton, John Coltrane, and Grover Washington Jr. are worth checking out, btw. Aside from Double Fantasy, I don't think there is a classic pop/rock album for the year, much less one that would've sold enough to get Grammy's attention. It would've been interesting to see Washington/Withers, Benatar, The Police, or Dolly in the ultimate showdown, but Lennon was going to get his posthumous tribute, regardless.
It's pretty good for a bunch of leftovers. I'd give it 7/10, but we know that Grammy and the Stones weren't really close back in the day. "Best Album Package" was a funny way to dip their toe in the water, though. "We see you, guys! We're not sure that we like you, but cool artwork!"
I know, and they also were nominated for a Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for Tattoo You (losing to The Police). But those were their only two nominations for performance/writing/arranging to that point, and they didn't win any Grammys of their own until they were given a Lifetime Achievement Award. Even now, they have two Grammys for recording (in 1995 and 2018) and one for a Best Video (1995). Given their stature, that's rather slight recognition from the industry.
The only ones of these I've heard are Kim Carnes and Steely Dan. They're both pretty good but I'm not sure they are award nominee worthy.
25th Annual Grammy Awards - February 23, 1983 Toto, Toto IV Donald Fagen, The Nightfly John Cougar, American Fool Paul McCartney, Tug of War Billy Joel, The Nylon Curtain John Denver hosts again. He didn’t win anything, or even get a nomination as far as I could tell. I’m guessing his 1982 album Seasons of the Heart was really unremarkable. But I digress. Last time, I pointed out that guitarist Steve Lukather and drummer Jeff Porcaro of Toto played on a combined total of three Album of the Year nominees at the 24th ceremony and called it “foreshadowing.” The payoff for that is Toto cleaning house at the 25th ceremony. Toto IV won two awards including Album of the Year, the hit single Rosanna won three awards including Record of the Year, the band won Producer of the Year, and for co-writing George Benson’s Turn Your Love Around, Steve Lukather won Best Rhythm & Blues Song. Believe it or not, though, Africa - the band’s only number one hit - didn’t get nominated for anything. But Rosanna and Africa were just two of five singles released for Toto IV. The other three - Make Believe, I Won’t Hold You Back, and Waiting for Your Love - are pretty good, kinda boring and pretty good, respectively. To be honest, I found most of the album ranging somewhere between “pretty good” and “kinda boring.” I’m not surprised that the two best songs were the two biggest hits everyone remembers. I’m not going to make my verdict “it’s not an Ultron” because it’s only slightly better than mediocre and I’m kind of tired of saying it when I don’t use it as often as I thought I would. So instead of “it’s not an Ultron,” I’ll say Toto IV is a Totoro. Yeah, I know, everyone else loves My Neighbor Totoro, but I bet most people only remember the fun parts when Totoro’s on screen. That ain’t most of the movie, folks. Also, Toto is in “Totoro” anyway, so it works out perfectly. Our first runner-up is The Nightfly, the solo debut of Steely Dan co-founder and audiophile icon Donald Fagen. Hang on, Michael Omartian and Jeff Porcaro play on this album too? I guess I should add to what I said last time. A lot of the same session musicians worked on Breakin’ Away, The Dude and Gaucho, not just the two men I mentioned. Small world, isn’t it? Anyway, it would seem Steely Dan’s breakup following the drama behind Gaucho was a blessing in disguise. Aside from Maxine, The Nightfly has relatively more energy than Gaucho, potentially putting it on par with Aja. For real, Green Flower Street and Walk Between Raindrops are jams. I do have to take off points for Fagen’s singing voice, unfortunately. He’s not a bad singer and The Nightfly is a solid album (certainly better than Toto IV), but his voice can sometimes make an otherwise excellent song like The Goodbye Look feel like a bit of a drag. I have no such issues with John Mellencamp’s voice. His 1982 commercial breakthrough American Fool is best known for the hit singles Hurts So Good (which won Best Male Rock Vocal Performance) and Jack & Diane. It’s also known for being released back when John Mellencamp went by the stage name “John Cougar.” Apparently, a German name like “Mellencamp” was considered too hard to market in the mid-70s, an issue John Denver knew all too well. By the way, on the morning of the day I wrote this, I was driving to work and I heard Jack & Diane on the radio. Talk about coincidences. Now, I really liked this album, but John does not share the enthusiasm. A short while after American Fool was released, John said “there's three good songs on that record, and the rest is just sort of filler.” Which three? Well, according to producer Don Gehman, the label, Riva Records, briefly lost interest in the album after Gehman showed an A&R guy what he and John had recorded. He said “We had Jack & Diane, we had Hand to Hold On To, we had Weakest Moments — we had some good songs — and while I don’t know the precise nature of the discussions that took place, Riva went from wanting to get a new producer to not even wanting John on the label anymore.” Right, so I don’t know what he’s talking about. Weakest Moments is the filler. Everything else is great. Heck, the title track that was included as a bonus on the album’s 2005 reissue is great. So I give the album a thumbs up and the label a thumbs down for making Mellencougar second guess himself. Next up is Sir Paul McCartney’s Tug of War. It lost every category for which it was nominated, which is a bit of a dick move on the Academy's part. The Academy wouldn’t have given the time of day to Double Fantasy if not for John Lennon’s murder. Apparently, their change of heart didn’t do much for Lennon’s former songwriting partner. But anyway, after 1980’s McCartney II, Wings got back together to rehearse and record songs that would eventually make their way onto this album and 1983’s Pipes of Peace. Those sessions were understandably put on hold on December 9 when Sir Paul woke up and learned Lennon had been killed the night before. So I think of Tug of War as both an unofficial Wings album and a condolence call. It certainly seems that way given songs like the beautiful Here Today and the fact that Denny Laine and Sirs George Martin and Ringo Starr worked on some of the album tracks. Oh, and Stevie Wonder. I love What’s That You’re Doing, which is less of a duet between them and more a Stevie Wonder song that Sir Paul just happens to be on too. This is the album with Ebony and Ivory, by the way. I thought it was worth letting you know. There’s also Carl Perkins, who has a duet with Sir Paul on Get It. Perkins was a big influence on Sir Paul, who once claimed "if there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles." The band even covered a few Carl Perkins songs like Honey Don’t and Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby. Come to think of it, maybe a condolence call isn't the right comparison for this album since condolence calls usually aren’t known for being this enjoyable. Regardless, I really dig this album; two thumbs up. Alright, who’s left? Ooh, Billy Joel’s The Nylon Curtain! I’m tempted to call this album underrated, but that probably isn’t something you’d say of a Grammy-nominated record. Screw it, I can’t help being biased. This album is brilliant and I love it. Shout out to Surprises. And now we get to the summary. This was an odd year in that every single album that didn’t win was better than the one that did. The Nightfly was pretty solid and American Fool was really good, but for my money, either Tug of War or The Nylon Curtain should have won instead.
Tug of War should've won. It's the dumbest ******* decision on the part of the Academy as far as I'm concerned. Pure brilliance in every regard gets beat by friggin' Toto?
Toto IV is one of my favourite records. At last, an undisputed (by me ) winner! American Fool and The Nylon Curtain are also very good albums. The Nightfly is okay but Tug Of War is not for me.
26th Annual Grammy Awards - February 28, 1984 Michael Jackson, Thriller David Bowie, Let’s Dance Billy Joel, An Innocent Man The Police, Synchronicity Various Artists, Flashdance I told you Quincy Jones would get more Grammys. As you know, Thriller is the biggest-selling album of all time (or second biggest, since The Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) apparently overtook it in 2018). It was the number one R&B album of 1983 and the number one pop album two years in a row. Jackson’s work resulted in twelve nominations and nine wins (including one for another record that won Best Recording for Children, if you can believe it). The ceremony remains notable for having the Grammy Awards’ largest TV audience ever. 51.67 million people saw the scalp burns Jackson got from that Pepsi commercial. You might laugh if I told you the album was predicted to be a disappointment, but the concern is more understandable when you realize the lead single was The Girl is Mine with Sir Paul McCartney, released a month ahead of the album. It’s a good song, but not exactly the best the album had to offer. Still, it peaked at 2 on Billboard. About a month after the album’s release came the second single and the album’s first number one hit, Billie Jean, and that’s when the album became a chart topper. Then came Beat It, the album’s second and last number one hit single as well as Record of the Year winner. The rest of the singles were top ten hits, including the title track. But the important question, of course, is if the album is good enough to justify its success. And it’s a stupid question because the answer is obviously “yes.” While The Lady in My Life is a bit bland compared to the rest of the album, Thriller is still as great as everyone says. Also, check the personnel for a few familiar names. The members of Toto were extremely busy. You may wonder why anyone not named Michael Jackson bothered to release an album in the same eligibility period. But they did, and so we’ll have to talk about them. First up is David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. It’s really good, but Modern Love and the title track are especially great. I don’t have much else to say about the album beyond that, so we’ll move on. Billy Joel went through a divorce during the recording of his ninth studio album. This was his first time being single since becoming famous, so naturally, he went for supermodels. He dated Elle Macpherson, who was nicknamed “The Body” for good reason even if she didn’t like being called that. Then he dated Christie Brinkley, who was at the time THE supermodel. She had recently made the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue for a third consecutive year. While it’s a cliché to say women like that could make a guy feel like a kid again, that was the case with Billy. He himself said he “kind of felt like a teenager all over again,” so he started writing songs in the style of music he enjoyed as a teenager in the 1960s and that’s how we got An Innocent Man. If you go to the album’s Wikipedia page, you can see every singer or group to whom Billy was paying homage, like Ben E. King and the Drifters on the title track, Sam Cooke on Careless Talk, Smokey Robinson on Leave a Tender Moment Alone, and The Four Seasons on Uptown Girl (in case you were wondering why Billy sounded like Frankie Valli). As Billy put it, he was “kind of reliving my youth.” And of course, nothing sells like nostalgia, so this album was a big commercial success. And this being a Billy Joel album, it’s really good. Personal favorites include This Night and Leave a Tender Moment Alone, though I also love the title track and The Longest Time. Next up is Synchronicity, the fifth and final studio album by The Police. The album won Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and its lead single Every Breath You Take won two Grammys, including Song of the Year. You know Every Breath You Take. It was the number one song of 1983. And fun fact: Sting wrote it on the writing desk at Ian Fleming’s Jamaican estate. But I digress. While this album is really good, I don’t have much to say about it, so I reached out to an online friend who’s a big fan of The Police and asked if they had any thoughts to share on the album. They said Miss Gradenko is underrated (it is pretty good) and Mother - one of the most unsettling songs ever written - is an “infectiously catchy ass song.” And with that, we move onto the last album in this category. The soundtrack for the 1983 film Flashdance won Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special. It also spawned two number one hits: Michael Sembello’s Maniac and Irene Cara’s Flashdance...What a Feeling. The latter won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance among other non-Grammy awards. The soundtrack is also really good. No one is going to argue that Thriller had no right to win or pretend it wasn't successful enough to win no matter what. However, if we disregard sales and just look at the albums in terms of quality, I’d say they’re all equally good picks for the prize.
27th Annual Grammy Awards - February 26, 1985 Lionel Richie, Can’t Slow Down Tina Turner, Private Dancer Cyndi Lauper, She’s So Unusual Prince & the Revolution, Purple Rain Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A. Welcome to the year 1984, where every nominee in this category is its associated artist’s highest-selling album either in general or in the U.S. specifically. If nothing from any of these albums appears on the soundtrack for Wonder Woman 1984, it will be a huge missed opportunity. Lionel Richie’s second solo effort Can’t Slow Down was the number one R&B album of 1984. Three of its five singles were top ten hits and the other two singles - All Night Long (All Night) and Hello - reached number one. In addition to Album of the Year, Lionel shared Producer of the Year with James Anthony Carmichael (who produced for Lionel’s group The Commodores) and David Foster (who appeared in this category numerous times). But did the album deserve its success? Not really. Truth be told, I didn’t have high expectations going into Can’t Slow Down because Lionel Richie’s solo career was mostly comprised of slow ballads. Heck, his first solo hit was Endless Love. To be clear, though, I don’t have issue with slow romantic ballads. However, imagine you’re having a candlelit dinner with a woman and you want to tell her how you feel about her. You wouldn’t want to give her some line she’s heard hundreds of times; you’d want to tell her something she could only ever hear from you. That’s what a good slow romantic ballad should do, and songs like Penny Lover, The Only One and Hello don’t cut it for me. The title track that opens the album is alright, but feels like it needs powerful vocals that Lionel isn’t delivering. The album is at its best when it’s fun and upbeat, namely on all the songs over six minutes in length: All Night Long (All Night), Love Will Find a Way and Running with the Night. I’m not surprised Love Will Find a Way sounds like a Stevie Wonder song since it was co-written by a guy who played and toured with Stevie Wonder. In short, there are eight songs on Can’t Slow Down and I only liked three or four of them, but since one or two of those weren’t singles, I can’t call the album a Totoro. What I will say is that Can’t Slow Down is false advertisement and, in my opinion, didn’t deserve its win over its competitors. As the saying goes, ladies first. Tina Turner made a commercial comeback with Private Dancer, which remains her best-selling album in the U.S. What’s Love Got to Do with It won three Grammys, including Record and Song of the Year, and Better Be Good to Me won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance somehow. Production-wise, this album is very much a product of its time. I don’t say that as a negative, though it does rear its ugly head on her covers of The Beatles’ Help! (which wasn’t included on the American release) and Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together. The album is otherwise pretty good - I loved I Might Have Been Queen and Show Some Respect - but it could only ever have been made in 1984. I know this because the album includes a cover of a David Bowie song called 1984. Interestingly, the title track sounds a lot like Steely Dan, which is weirdly impressive since it was written by Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits. We’ll get to him next time. Best New Artist winner Cyndi Lauper had an enormous success with her Best Album Package-winning debut, She’s So Unusual. You know it as the album with Time After Time and her signature song Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The latter is a cover, believe it or not. And ironically, the original artist was a man. His name was Robert Hazard. With his permission, Lauper changed the words for her cover, which was for the best considering that when he sings “girls just want to have fun,” what he really means is “girls just want to have sex with me.” For real, the bridge of his version could be paraphrased as “Hey, girl, I know you don’t want to upset your boyfriend, but what you want more than that is to have sex with me whenever I come by your place.” Lauper unsurprisingly left the bridge out of her version and referred to Hazard’s original song as that “which we do not speak (of) lest we go blind.” The rest of She’s So Unusual is also really good. She Bop is a fun song about, uh, giving yourself a hand. All Through the Night is very pretty. Witness and I’ll Kiss You are fun too. I could do without the voices on the phone in Yeah Yeah, though. Ah, and the album has a pretty good cover of Prince's When You Were Mine, which I'm surprised wasn't spelled When U Were Mine. And that brings us to our next nominee. Purple Rain by Prince & the Revolution was the soundtrack album to a movie of the same name, a sort of fictionalized account of the artist’s beginnings a la 8 Mile. The Purple Rain album was a huge success. It's one of the highest-selling soundtrack albums of all time. It won two Grammys while its lead single When Doves Cry was the number one song on both the pop and R&B charts in 1984. Also, you know the Parental Advisory sticker? You can thank Darling Nikki for that. And that’s all I have to say about the album. We all know it’s great, so let’s move on to the last runner-up. Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen was the number one album of 1985. Springsteen is another artist on whom I was raised; I’ve seen him live with The E Street Band and I’ve seen him on Broadway. I swear it was just a coincidence that I wrote this on his seventieth birthday. But since it is his birthday, consider this review my gift to him. After his 1980 album The River became his first to reach number one on Billboard, Springsteen made 1982’s Nebraska out of a bunch of acoustic demos of songs intended to be recorded with The E Street Band. I consider Nebraska to be underrated, but I mainly bring it up because it was a precursor of the darker subject matter on Born in the U.S.A. Some of the songs from the Nebraska recording sessions were reworked for him and The E Street Band to play on the following album, including Downbound Train, an unreleased song with the working title Child Bride that somehow became Working on the Highway, and the title track off Born in the U.S.A. The demo version of Born in the U.S.A.’s title track has been released and can be found online, and let me tell you, it does not put you in a patriotic mood. Granted, the song isn’t supposed to be patriotic, but some people clearly didn’t pay enough attention to the verses to realize that if, say, Ronald Reagan thought it would be a great song to use for his re-election campaign. Anyway, I love the album. There are some weak spots lyrically, yet the album is seamless musically. I’d say it’s somewhere between really good and great. Though Dancing in the Dark isn’t the best song on the album, it deserved to win Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. I sort of gave the game away earlier by saying I don’t think Can’t Slow Down should have won. All of the other albums were better.
I'd like to take this opportunity to properly wish Bruce Springsteen a happy seventieth birthday. Thank you, Boss, and happy birthday!
Yeah...I was just talking to Bruce on the phone and I wished him a happy birthday. He said thanks and added he was enjoying this thread but felt Albuman was going too damn fast! Twenty five years of Grammy Awards in twenty five minutes !
No, the mocking tone of your comment. I don't know if that was how it sounded to you, but it came across that way.
