The Grammys And The Jewish Condition

Rabbi Gerald Skolnik, Jewish Week Online Columnist; originally printed 01/30/14

Partly because my daughter had asked me to, but also because I enjoy live performances of music, I watched the Grammy Awards last Sunday night. In all honesty, I should say I watched the Grammys until I nodded off in my very comfortable chair, but I saw a good deal.

I am one of those boomers who remain addicted to the music that I grew up to. There’s a wonderful line in the classic movie “The Big Chill” in which Kevin Kline’s character is accused of playing only the music from his college years. He replies, “there is no other music.” Largely, I agree. I’m not quite that exclusive in my tastes, which are actually eclectic, and incorporate choral, classical, and country in addition to classic rock. But still… give me some good Crosby, Stills and Nash, or the Beatles, and I’m good to go.

In that vein, it was nice to see Paul McCartney singing with Ringo. But really, who wanted to hear them sing a new song that no one knows? As long as they were singing together, and you the only two surviving members of the Beatles were making music, couldn’t they have done something that they recorded together all those years ago? But I digress…

What struck me most of all about the Grammys program was the degree to which it wasn’t at all about the music as much as it was about the production. This is not particularly a new insight. With the advent of music videos more than twenty years ago, it became nearly impossible for an artist to release a song without an accompanying video. Some, of course, became classics, like Michael Jackson’s. But whether they were memorable or not, they represented a major transition point for rock music. It was no longer about the song per se; it was about a different kind of art form. A video could make or break a song, regardless of whether the song was outstanding on its own, or totally forgettable. (See Miley Cyrus, among others…).

So at these Grammy, you had P!nk singing while impersonating a Cirque du Soleil performer, and enough artists performing to explosions of fire and smoke to satisfy the hardest core pyromaniac. And oh yes… plenty of provocatively dressed back-up dancers, another newly indispensable component of any live rock performance these days (see Robin Thicke).

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