Brandon's Buzz

The latest contenders for the highest honor the music industry bestows — the Grammy award — are being announced tonight in a special concert (which, as I type this, finds Celine Dion mercilessly butchering Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen”), and I, your humble servant, am here with instant analysis of the big news.

• BEST NEW ARTIST: What an unmitigated disaster this lineup is! I can get with Duffy (whose debut record, the enchanting Rockferry, I loved), and I can even get with Adele (whose breakthrough hit “Chasing Pavements” is causing quite the radio ruckus this fall), but where the hell are the names of Leona Lewis and OneRepublic on this list? I’d even have taken those annoying starlets Katy Perry and Sara Bareilles over the likes of Lady Antebellum, Jazmine Sullivan (who?!), and The Jonas Brothers (!!). Gag me, folks!
• ALBUM OF THE YEAR: Not that I necessarily agree with these selections (although it’s a fair bet that at least two of them will appear in my forthcoming year-end top ten, and that’s two more than the Grammys and I usually share in common), but this is an atypically progressive gathering of nominees for this usually staid category, agreed? You can almost bet on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss‘ brilliant collaboration Raising Sand winning the trophy come February — Krauss is the Academy darling, after all; the woman could hack up a hairball on record and get the gold — but don’t count out Coldplay‘s surprisingly spry Viva La Vida. Also nominated: Lil Wayne, Ne-Yo, and Radiohead.
• RECORD OF THE YEAR: Leona Lewis finally gets some love, as her fabulous smash “Bleeding Love” grabs a much-deserved nod here. She’ll have tough competition from Coldplay (“Viva La Vida,” the band’s very first number one single), who have previously won in this category (in 2004, for “Clocks”), Plant & Krauss (the moving “Please Read the Letter”), M.I.A. (the left-field summer smash “Paper Planes”), and Adele (whose nomination for “Chasing Pavements” pretty much anoints her the front-runner in the Best New Artist category over presumed favorite Duffy). My money’s still on the divine Lewis, though.

More thoughts once I have parsed and fully processed the complete list of nominations….