Posted by NY Magazine recently asked a question regarding the Kanye West/Taylor Swift ‘controversy’:
Does his mission to acknowledge the greatness of contemporary musicians not amount to a worthy cause?
It’s a legitimate question to ask and in principle, I probably come down on Kanye’s side but he does a disservice to this mission by employing methods such as he did during the MTV Video Music Awards. Many people seem to acknowledge that Swift didn’t have the best female video almost in passing. Or they’re now so defensive about not liking her video that they sound like spoiled, angry jag-offs.
Sometimes it’s not enough to be right. You hafta ackrite.
I remember in 1988 when the Grammys’ first instituted an award for Best Metal Performance. Jethro Tull, which featured a flute solo by its lead singer that year, won the award over Metallica’s Black Album. The Black Album lost to a flute! It was generally viewed as an outrage that Metallica lost. But I don’t remember anyone going off at Jethro Tull during the show. So almost 20 years later, we remember the real issue here – that Metallica lost even though they made a far-reaching, ahead-of-its-time work. Not that some punk decided to steal the spotlight all to himself.
We can debate the relative importance of the VMA’s as opposed to the Grammys’ or any other award shows. (I didn’t even know they were on until I started seeing a bunch of Facebook updates on the incident). But Kanye West stole the spotlight from Taylor Swift AND Beyoncé. And that was the first time I mentioned Beyoncé in this post.
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