On Sunday night, James Corden hosted the 60th annual Grammy Awards on CBS, and according to the ratings, it was an epic fail.
According to Rick Porter at TV by the Numbers, the Grammys pulled in an unimpressive 19.1 million viewers with a 5.9 rating among the target demographic of people between the ages of 18 and 49. This means that the awards ceremony had its worst ratings among that demographic in the history of the show, and this year’s ceremony had the lowest viewership since 2009.
The question that must be addressed then, is why did the Grammys do so badly this year? Is it the unnecessary, unwelcomed and unrelenting calls to politics? Is it the hypocrisy reflected in the fact that, even though Hollywood is pushing this woman’s empowerment movement, only one woman won an award? Or is it simply that the self-aggrandizing gaggle of bad performers no longer connects with the average American viewer?
It is all three.
First, the music industry needs to address the fact that it is alienating half of its audience with its ceaseless, elitist political attacks. From Sarah Silverman’s terrible joke about the world basically being over to Trevor Noah’s unfunny remarks about “a time when Trump wasn’t president” to Camila Cabello talking about the virtues of the Dreamers, which of course lead up to their tired attempt to keep Hillary Clinton relevant by having her read from the tabloid novel “Fire and Fury.”
These extreme left talking points, which were never invited, have definitely had an impact on viewership. Americans in the Midwest region simply do not want to be called racist, sexist bigots by some of the richest people in the world. The same people, mind you, who are being outed seemingly every day for sexually assaulting each other. It is very hard to maintain solid ratings when you consistently attack half of your potential crowd.
If the alienation did not get the job done, they also showed their extreme hypocrisy when it comes to the feminist movement. They proved this hypocrisy in more than one way, most obviously was the fact that only a single, solitary woman won a major award. Yet, the more hidden hypocrisy is in the fact that a lot of the artists who were nominated have very degrading lyrics and music videos that involve oversexualizing women’s bodies with provocative clothing and dance moves. All you have to do is watch the end of the music video for Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic,” title track off his Album of the Year, to see how empowering these celebrities really are to women.
They did not stop there because apparently hypocrisy and alienation did not do the trick. These celebrities were also just bad performers with even worse music. This was shown by the nostalgic performances of Patti LuPone and Elton John. These two terrific artists and performers came to the Grammys and reminded us what good music and quality performance are, but of course, they did not make the headlines after the ceremony. Instead, we saw how incredibly nauseating some awful performances were: DJ Khaled puking random words into the mic, Kendrick Lamar incoherently mumbling while bashing the president, and washed-up U2 shouting about how great “sh*t-hole” countries are. This is art?
The poor viewership of the Grammys is extremely damaging to the music industry because it proves how out of touch our entertainers are. They need to realize that infusing politics with their hypocritical and tasteless performances does not result in the average American wanting to watch your elitist awards show. If you want to gain respect, go back to what people want to see and hear: good music by people who work at their craft and do not alienate half of their audience.
