Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - And the Grammy Goes to… Edition Part 1
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4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Do you watch the Grammy Awards every year and groan, or even yell at the screen? Hit Parade host Chris Molanphy sure does. But he has a weird hot take: The Grammys are better off not trying to be cool. They should reward the popular stuff—especially younger people’s music.
Where the Recording Academy actually goes wrong is rewarding the old stuff—legendary artists long past their prime, from Frank Sinatra to Eric Clapton, Steely Dan to Beck. The Grammy wins remembered most fondly are artists at the peak of their chart prowess: Carole King. Stevie Wonder. Michael Jackson. George Michael. Lauryn Hill. Adele. Taylor Swift (and more Taylor…and more Taylor…and more…).
When did the Grammys get it most right—and wrong? (Was the Toto win really so bad?) And how can they become more relevant? (Hint: much more rap.)
Join Chris Molanphy as he offers a chart nerd’s take on the Recording Academy and offers guidelines for good Grammy governance, just before the 2024 awards. It’s an episode right in the Nick of Time.
Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.7 | Hey there, hit parade listeners. |
| 0:06.4 | What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. |
| 0:10.3 | Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. |
| 0:14.1 | Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? |
| 0:17.9 | Sign up for Slate Plus. |
| 0:20.0 | It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's |
| 0:23.2 | acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com slash hitparade plus. You'll get to hear |
| 0:31.2 | every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, Hit Parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, |
| 0:40.4 | deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com |
| 0:47.7 | slash hit parade plus. Thanks, and now please enjoy part one of this Hit Parade episode. |
| 1:06.2 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from |
| 1:13.0 | coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's |
| 1:18.2 | Why Is This Song Number One series? On today's show, in a little over three weeks, this song and |
| 1:25.5 | the album it comes from, we'll be competing for prizes on the 66th |
| 1:30.6 | annual edition of the Grammy Awards. The artist is Solana Imani Rowe, better known as Siza. Her song, |
| 1:40.5 | a number one smash on Billboard's Hot 100 last spring, is Kill Bill. And it's from her |
| 1:47.9 | blockbuster number one album, SOS. And if, by some chance, Siza sweeps all nine prizes she's up |
| 1:56.8 | for, she will set a new record for most Grammys won in a single night now that's |
| 2:15.6 | a tall order especially given Grammy history. A certain type of artist and |
| 2:22.6 | recording tends to sweep the Recording Academy's prizes, something espousing traditional pop values, |
| 2:30.8 | a little less hip. In case you're curious, the album that won the most Grammys in a single night |
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