The Grammys Again Defy Common Sense

By JIM FUSILLI

For this year's balloting, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences streamlined the Grammy's award categories, cutting the number to 78 from 109. The trimming came mostly in the less celebrated, not-so-commercially obsessed fields, though what were once separate male and female categories in country, pop, rap, R&B and rock are now no longer divided by gender. Pop, rock and urban music by Latin artists have been shoehorned together; hard rock and heavy metal are now one category. The jazz categories were pruned, R&B categories halved to four, and American Indian, Cajun, Hawaiian and zydeco music lumped into one category dubbed Regional Roots Music.

Since the Grammys are in large part designed to help sell recordings, you'd think the industry would want as many winners as possible. But once again, the Grammys defy common sense, and not only when it nominates Justin Vernon's Bon Iver as Best New Artist when his debut album came out almost four years ago. The awards ceremony, an excuse for the recording industry to applaud itself and disguise the very weak soup that is today's mainstream popular music, will be broadcast Sunday night on CBS.

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Grammy-nominated Bon Iver performs at the the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in December.

But even with the deep cuts, there are some categories plump with talent worth exploring. The Best Traditional R&B Performance category is a killer with great tracks by Eric Benét, Cee Lo Green with Melanie Fiona, R. Kelly, Raphael Saadiq, and Betty Wright & the Roots. A few unnecessary flights of melisma aside, the Best R&B Performance class works too; it includes songs by Marsha Ambrosius, Ledisi, Kelly Price & Stokely, Corinne Bailey Rae and Charlie Wilson.

Category 49—Best World Music Album—comprises discs by Nigeria's Femi Kuti, South Africa's Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mali's Tinariwen and by the cross-cultural project among Cuban and Malian musicians known as AfroCubism, whose self-titled album is excellent. Apparently, nominators couldn't find a fifth worthy album among the thousands released world-wide or bring themselves to celebrate artists based in Asia, Europe or South America. But it's a solid class as is.

Laudable discs by Alison Krauss & Union Station, Jim Lauderdale, Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers, the Del McCoury Band, Ralph Stanley, and Chris Thile & Michael Daves make up the Best Bluegrass Album category. (Yes, that's six nominees. Are the Grammys saying bluegrass pickers and singers deserve more attention than world musicians?) Perhaps one or two of these albums might have enriched the Best Americana category, which is rife with talented reliables Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm and Lucinda Williams; only Ms. Williams's "Blessed" is a superior work. The fifth nominee in the Americana category is by Linda Chorney, who wooed nominators via a Grammy website. Her amateurish "Emotional Jukebox" is instantly forgettable, her nomination an embarrassment to the process. Americana is one of the richest veins of contemporary music, but you wouldn't be able to tell by how badly the Academy botched this list.

Down at Category 55 is Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, which asks voters to evaluate music without the context for which it was created—to support story and character in film. "Black Swan" by Clint Mansell, "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2" and "The King's Speech," both by Alexandre Desplat, "The Shrine" by Ryan Shore and "Tron Legacy" by Daft Punk are the nominees, but can voters appraise them in a vacuum? For example, the Daft Punk score, which worked well within the film, seems ponderous when it stands alone. Mr. Shore's work is appropriately creepy, as befits its duty in a horror film, but doesn't move much. By the way, among these nominees only Mr. Desplat's 2010 score for "The King's Speech" was up for an Oscar. Last year's Oscar winner, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's "The Social Network" score, isn't among the Grammy nominees.

The academy must think highly of electronic dance music: Best Dance Recording and the Best Dance/Electronica Album are categories nine and 10, just below the slick pop classes. The latter is a strong group: "Zonoscope" by Cut/Copy; "4x4=12" by Deadmau5; "Nothing but the Beat" by David Guetta; "Body Talk, Pt. 3" by Robyn; and "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" by Skrillex. None of these albums sold as well as the nominees for Album of the Year—Adele's "21," Foo Fighters' "Wasting Light," Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," Bruno Mars's "Doo-Wops & Hooligans" and Rihanna's "Loud"—but dance and electronic music, say the genre's artists, tends to be shared by its fans in greater numbers than traditional pop albums. Perhaps its elevation to Top-10 status is recognition by the industry that sales aren't the ultimate measurement of what's popular or what's good.

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.