This article was cowritten by Shelby Swanson and Shay Wisdom.
The Grammys The Grammys did not disappoint with their deliverance of excellent performances and exciting narratives, but they failed overall in the quality of their selection for the awards. The Grammys consistently nominates the most popular music of the year in the general categories, even if they lack quality. Despite their popularity, bad guy and similar trashy pop songs shouldn’t have received the hype they did.
The Main Takeaways:
Billie Eilish won all four general Grammys. She won Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for When We All Sleep, Where Do We Go?, and she won Best New Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for “bad guy.”
Billie Eilish’s album When We All Sleep, Where Do We Go? was fantastic and she 100 percent deserved to win Best New Artist of the Year. However, her Song of the Year win for “bad guy” should have gone to “Lover” or “Hard Place,” much more profound songs with beautiful, classic production.
Tyler the Creator was nominated for Best Rap Album and took home the award for Igor. He definitely left an impression on people, even if just by the thumbnail, on his music videos alone. It seemed that he was the obvious choice for the award, considering that there weren’t any albums that stood out as much as his did. Lil Nas X won two Grammys: Best Pop Duo Performance and Best Music Video for “Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus).” Lil Nas X’s collaboration with Billy Ray Cyrus on “Old Town Road” was genre-bending and groundbreaking, most certainly worthy of the Best Pop Duo Performance award.
The music video for this was iconic, spawning many memes and lots of buzz online. Out of all the music videos of 2019, “Old Town Road’s” definitely stands out as the clear choice for Best Music Video. Lizzo took home three Grammys for Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Traditional R&B Performance and Best Urban Contemporary Album. Lizzo’s music further exemplifies the way that the Grammys have been promoting genre-bending music. More and more artists are starting to break the common tropes and conventions of music.
The Oscars Besides Parasite sweeping four awards, there weren’t many surprises at the Oscars, but maybe that’s for the best. Overall, the movies (that weren’t sequels or remakes) in 2019 were great! The quality of cameras and cinematography has only increased since last year, giving us visual delights like Toy Story 4 or 1917. The popularity contest continues, but the movies that were awarded deserved to win it.
The Main Takeaways:
Parasite became the first non- English film to win Best Picture, and it also won Best Screenplay, Best International Film and director Bong Joon Ho won best director. This is a big win for international films and Asian representation in the film industry. But even outside of this, Parasite was an excellent film. It bended the genres of dark comedy, drama and thriller in an exciting way while tackling the issue of the wealth gap in South Korea.
Despite this win for diversity in Hollywood, there was still a lack of representation of African American actors. Cynthia Erivo, the actress who played Harriet Tubman in Harriet, was the only African American nominated in any acting category.
The awards for Best Actor and Actress went to Joaquin Phoenix and Renée Zellweger for their work in Joker and Judy. Phoenix and the movie Joker have cleaned out almost every awards show they have been to, and for good reason. Zellweger performed equally astoundingly in Judy.
1917 took home three awards for Best Cinematography, Visual Effects and Sound Mixing. This is not a surprise to anyone who’s seen this film or been following Oscar buzz. 1917 had the best film production seen in years. Everything from the filming to the audio arrangement captures the senses of the viewer and draws them into the world of World War I in an impressively realistic way.
