{"id":1137,"date":"2015-02-22T06:30:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T06:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2015-02-22T06:30:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T06:30:45","slug":"why-beyonce-should-have-won-album-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/22\/why-beyonce-should-have-won-album-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Beyonc\u00e9 Should Have Won Album of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following Beck\u2019s winning Album of the Year my Facebook feed was filled with multiple posts validating this as the correct choice. Many people I know reposted memes\u00a0dealing with the below issues as well as linked to this BuzzFeed article<\/a>. I, however, found myself in disagreement over this sudden solidarity and especially with BuzzFeed\u2019s article. After all, two of the five claims made in the list (He\u2019s deserved an Artist of the Year award since 1995 and he threw a shoe in an interview with Thurston Moore in 1995) literally have nothing to do with anything Beck has produced in the past year while the memes have a notion of artistry that are very limited and thus refute\u00a0below. That said, here\u2019s the five reasons why Beyonc\u00e9 ought to have been the true winner for Album of the Year!<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Beck is just a musician, Beyonc\u00e9 is an artist.<\/strong>
\nBeck isn\u2019t even on the same level as Beyonc\u00e9. Beck released a CD of audio recordings while Beyonc\u00e9 released a visual album. These are not just music videos that she released, but a thematically coherent and visual choreographed creation. Beck has a single video to support his album. If music is a vehicle for education, entertainment, and edification than the album Beyonc\u00e9 is a spaceship while Morning Phase is a dinghy.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s art has greater mass appeal.<\/strong>
\nAt the time of writing this Beck has sold only 330,000 copies of his album Morning Phase while Beyonc\u00e9 has sold over three million. Beyonc\u00e9 has over seven million followers of her YouTube Channel. Beck does not even have eighty thousand. I\u2019m not so na\u00efve as to mistake sales and followers for great art \u2013 after all Nickleback and the Twilight movie series both had high sales. Sales are, however, a consideration that with the others prove she is the greater artist and that her album is better.<\/p>\n

3. Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s art has greater niche appeal.<\/strong>
\nDue to the nature of art that Beyonc\u00e9 produces . For instance shortly after the publication of her her video for Run with husband Jay-Z\u2019s discussion about elements of it were featured on Critical Theory magazine<\/a>, Glenn Beck and a segment of NPR<\/a>. Lest I be accused of overly emphasizing one particular video that managed to resonate across various minor sphere\u2019s I would also encourage you to check out once of many<\/a> websites that document the \u201cIlluminati\u201d imagery and purported history of the artist. This is because she is an audio-visual artist. Perhaps there are some corners of the internet that go into similar dissections of Beck, but I was not able to find any.<\/p>\n

4. Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s avowed inclusion of other artists into her production process is an item in her favor, not against it.<\/strong>
\nThe production of art is not some isolated event created out of some magical sphere\u00a0of inspiration. Musicians are constantly influenced by the people they meet, the places they go and the art they consume. As Picasso said, good artists borrow, great artists steal.While it may be difficult to quantify <\/a>at times that doesn\u2019t meant that given enough time and effort<\/a> such influences can\u2019t be found. Bey is giving us a list of artists that she thinks are worthy enough to work with her and thus encouraging us to expand our audience!<\/p>\n

5. Beck is falsely lauded for introspection.<\/strong>
\nSome of the comments that I\u2019ve read and the images like those above falsely place Beck\u2019s introspective lyrics above what are wrongly presumed to be Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s more lighthearted pop verse. Beyonc\u00e9 deals with serious issues such as feminism, monogamy, parenthood, self-esteem and more but all in a way that is empowering rather than maudlin. To presume that because a few songs on it are lighthearted dance songs means that it is not sufficient to be \u201chigh music\u201d is to denigrate some of the most important emotions of the human condition.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beck winning was a legacy nod rather than an actual win and his doing so is more a comment on the nature of award-granting institutions than any real reflection of what is \u201cAlbum of the Year\u201d. After all, the only reason that the Grammy\u2019s are granted any credibility as a curator of good taste in an age that makes it easier for consumers to grant similar accolades is due to their age which \u2013 50 years \u2013 in the grand scheme of things is no long stretch of time. The composition of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences after all is but a small number of self-selected personages able to pay for membership and meet a criteria that my even my father, no music industry insider or player, is able to be a member of. The Grammy\u2019s provide no rhyme or reason for their choices, but rely solely upon consensus of their members. I however disagree and wrote the above to refute the cases that I\u2019ve encountered in Beck\u2019s favor. Don\u2019t agree with me? Decide for yourself after experiencing Beyonc\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0and listening\u00a0to\u00a0Morning Phase<\/a>,\u00a0make a case and share it with me.\"Beyonc\u00e9\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following Beck\u2019s winning Album of the Year my Facebook feed was filled with multiple posts validating this as the correct choice. Many people I know reposted memes\u00a0dealing with the below issues as well as linked to this BuzzFeed article. I, however, found myself in disagreement over this sudden solidarity and especially with BuzzFeed\u2019s article. After … Continue reading “Why Beyonc\u00e9 Should Have Won Album of the Year”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[73,74,75,44],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-uncategorized","tag-album-of-the-year","tag-beck","tag-beyonce","tag-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8e7kf-il","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}