"I didn't wan to do it. All the time you knew it."
Who doesn't enjoy a clever lyric, a great melody and the outrageous ways Grammy award show attendees show up on the red carpet these days?
So, at first blush the news of the now much shared memo CBS sent to Grammy award attendees seemed like a call to jump on the "censorship bad" bandwagon.
Cooler heads prevailed. Censorship! Really? We are now 13 years into the new millennium. The 20th century is becoming less and less visible in the review mirrors of our lives. Freedom of expression has supposedly been around for years, at least in the United States of America. So, WTF, CBS?
Then the light bulb went off. What if this wasn't bad? What if in the big picture it wasn't really about censorship either. What if this move was a brilliant tactic for higher ratings?
Controversy stirs the pot. Controversy engages notice and debate.
Personally, this author has not cared about the Grammy awards for at least the last ten years.
Most artists are the sort that if you tell them what not to do, they will want to do it more. At least this artist resembles that generalization.
Again: bad or brilliant? Knowing this "leaked" memo would incite some of these artists to perceive it as a license to be even more outrageous just made this interesting. For the first time in years, the parade of the music industry's celebration that is the Grammy awards may be worth watching. Then again, there may be some paint drying somewhere. Just sayin'!
This is not a dis(respect) to the music. Just seems music preference is too personal to each individual: the true test simply being whether one enjoys a particular piece of music or not.
Yet, the Grammy awards are about the music business. The music business is a whole different animal from music for music's sake. It will be very interesting to find out if Grammy award viewership is up this year.
Author's note: It was reported that the 2013 Grammy Award Show had the second highest ratings of any Grammy show yet. Giving credit where credit is due, how brilliant was it that controversy in the guise of censorship was spun into gold.
Now, what would be better than that?
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