The Grammys, Billie Eilish, and Our Broken Culture

Last night I watched the Grammys. I probably should have been doing something else, something more productive: writing one of the (many) papers I have due this week, or attempting to better understand the two-stage least squares estimation technique for instrumental variables regressions. But, well...

The Grammys has always been my favorite awards show experience. Though my commitment to the Oscars is far more serious, that fact often makes enjoying the show itself less straightforward than in the case of the Grammys, where I rarely have horses in the race. It is also inclined to be a better show than the Oscars simply by virtue of its subject matter. Live music gives itself to exciting moments, as anyone who has been sorely missing concerts over this year of pandemic isolation can attest. The Academy fills its awards show with performances of the (often fairly mediocre) pieces nominated for Best Original Song. The Recording Academy does the same... with the best music of the year.

And they pulled off by far the best awards show we have seen under the pandemic restrictions. I actually think this may have been *whispers* a better show than usual. The tiny location where the awards were given lent itself to a degree of intimacy allowed one to see nominees up close and personal, right alongside one another. And yet at the same time, forsaking the limitations of the stage in the usual ceremony lent itself to a broader canvas for the performances. These were some of the best live performances I've seen at an awards show, probably ever. Billie Eilish, standing on a car crooning her tragic and beautiful "Everything I Wanted"; Dua Lipa characteristically resplendent, capturing the exuberance of Future Nostalgia; Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B comically altering the lyrics of their decidedly not-suited-for-television hit "WAP" while capturing its spirit visually. The standout moment of the evening was an astonishing, devastating, magnificent Lil Baby performance that was so of the moment that it was almost painful to watch.

I was also delighted by the sheer variety of recognition. Nobody swept, which is how it should be in an excellent year for music. Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia was recognized deservedly for Best Pop Vocal Album, while Harry Styles took home Best Pop Solo Performance for "Watermelon Sugar" (my sister, who is deeply, maybe even tragically in love with Mr. Styles, will approve; I imagine she will also approve of how he looked during his live performance).

Megan Thee Stallion won Best New Artist, and was recognized along with Beyoncé for "Savage" in Best Rap Performance. This was but one of four awards won by Beyoncé, who shattered the record for most Grammy wins by a female artist. Song of the Year, in a mild upset, went to H.E.R.'s powerful and passionate "I Can't Breathe", while Album of the Year went to Taylor Swift for Folklore (an album that I had on non-stop repeat for a solid two weeks last summer).

And then came the big one: Record of the Year, which went to "Everything I Wanted," thus making Billie Eilish the first artist since U2 back in the early-2000s to win the award in back-to-back years. Her meteoric rise continues unabated. Having not noticed that the Recording Academy had decided to spread the wealth, I was not expecting her to win given the trajectory of the rest of the night.

Apparently, neither was she. Billie looked shocked and disbelieving. And then she went on stage, and said that this was not her award, but Megan Thee Stallion's – that a mistake had been made, and that the deserving artist was not crowned.

"You deserve this," she said, addressing Megan Thee Stallion directly. "You had a year that I think is untoppable. You are a queen. I want to cry thinking about how much I love you. You are so beautiful, you are so talented. You deserve everything in the world. I think about you constantly. I root for you always. You deserve it, honestly. Genuinely, this goes to her. Can we just cheer for Megan Thee Stallion please?" This was the majority of her speech, with just the last few seconds devoted to the cursory thanking of the Academy, her family, and her team.

Later Chrissy Teigen tweeted the following:

And she has a point.

Billie Eilish is one of the most image-conscious artists we have. That has always come through in the way she presents herself, but was made explicit in the recent documentary The World's a LIttle Blurry. Multiple times through the doc she explains worries and fears she has that are intimately related to what people will say about her on the Internet. She is in this way emblematic of my generation, one which grew up on a steady diet of Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok, where everything has become about projecting the "best" image of oneself, and of equating one's self worth to that image. It is a horrifying way of managing one's life. It is a culture that does not leave any room for fallibility – room that we all desperately need, because we are all fallible at some level. It is tragic that our relationships have become filtered through this lens. It is even more tragic for Billie Eilish, who at the age of 19 (!) is being scrutinized to a degree that no one of any age should be.

It is a shame that our culture has become one where we are more interested in tearing people down than lifting them up. It is a shame that Billie Eilish felt as though she had to deny herself the opportunity to enjoy the recognition of her magnificent work in order to pacify the bloodhounds waiting to pounce on her on the Internet, to make her feel as though she was undeserving. It is a shame that we have been brought to a point where a 19 year old who has just won Record of the Year in consecutive years has to feel bad about it.