Best New Artist | Hear! Hear!

Esperanza Spaulding is Best New Artist? Please.

Why not just give it to the Be Sharps? Oh wait ...

The Grammy nominations for “Best New Artist” are:

Justin Bieber
Drake
Florence & The Machine
Mumford & Sons
Esperanza Spaulding

And the winner is … who the fuck is Esperanza Spaulding?

Okay, seriously. I know the Grammys don’t mean jack these days, and NARAS wouldn’t be itself if they didn’t screw up at least one big award. But I think Bob Lefsetz summed it up with one line: “This is what eviscerates the credibility of NARAS. Is it a mainstream clusterfuck or an insider circle jerk?”

Indeed.

You change the rules to make sure Drake can still be nominated. You add in Florence + The Machine and Mumford & Sons — and Mumford has actually sold more than 750,000 copies of their debut, despite supposedly not having amarketable sound.

Then you nominate “Leave it to Bieber” to keep the teen set interested, and the best they can think of is to give the award to a jazz bassist and singer who has sold maybe 5,000 copies of her albums if she’s lucky. Oh, wait, it’s a Herbie Hancock sized conspiracy to help her have next week’s #1 album when thousands of drooling TV viewing morons rush out to buy what the Grammys’ told them insiders really are listening to.

Puhleeeze … It’s Jethro Tull in the metal category all over again. I’ll let Homer Simpson lead us out: