A Look at Beck and Last Year's Grammys

The 2016 Grammys are getting closer, so I decided to look back on the artists who took the cake last year. I was out of the loop about 2015's results, and I actually hadn't looked them up until just recently. As I checked the rankings, it turned out that I had already listened to the "Album of the Year" before I even knew it had won that title - and in a way, I was surprised that it had. 

It was Beck's "Morning Phase", a soft, ambient, acoustic work by the well-known Los Angeles musician. I had first listened to it just a month or so ago as I drove into Hoboken, and the weather that day seemed to match the music: cold, gray, and brooding. Not that "Morning Phase" is dark in any sense, but it certainly comes off as introspective and mellow. It's a great album, but it didn't exactly take off commercially, and certainly didn't top the charts, which was why I was slightly surprised it had stolen the show at the Grammys last year.

Beck's winning album originally sold so few copies compared to the big-name artists who are typically nominated for the award. Take Adele, for example. In 2012 her album "21" was a massive market success; it also won Album of the Year. Taylor Swift's "Fearless" similarly won the title in 2010. It turns out, however, that this prestigious award is given out not with regard to album sales or commercial success, but rather to "artistic or technical achievement", says Grammy.org.

I guess I had just gotten the wrong impression of what it takes to be an "Album of the Year" winner. You really don't have to be a chart-topper to pull it off. You don't have to go platinum on record sales, either. As a matter of fact, you just have to be a great artist and produce an exceptional, new work of music - which I believe Beck was able to do.