On Sunday, February 2, the 67th annual Grammys were held live on CBS in Los Angeles, California. For the past year, artists have supplied ample albums, collaborations, and singles that have carried the weight of emotions far heavier than meets the eye. However, this year’s Grammys have been far more controversial than the last. For the first time in history, two artist fandoms, the Swifties and the Billie Eilish fans, actually agree that this year’s winners weren’t exactly deserved. Billie Eilish’s and Taylor Swift’s careers have been full of award-winning performances and impressively heartfelt albums that have perfectly portrayed emotional life-long journeys, but they both walked away from the Grammys this year completely empty-handed. Here’s our take on why each of them should have won a Grammy.
Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish is a world-renowned singer, nominated 7 times this past event, and in her career so far winning nine Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, twenty Guinness World Records, seven MTV Video Music Awards, three Brit Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards. As of this year, Billie has been a singer for a decade, releasing 3 studio albums, 1 live album, 1 video album, 2 extended plays (EPs), 36 singles, 1 promotional single, and 32 music videos.
Besides her extensive accomplishments in the music field, Billie is an incredibly talented writer, working in collaboration with her songwriting duo and brother, Finneas O’Connell. Finneas has been a level head throughout Billie’s career, always seen with each other in unwavering support. Billie has never hesitated to thank her family and friends, extremely grateful for all she’s earned for herself.
Billie’s most recent album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, topped the charts in over 20 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, and charted all 10 of its songs in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Besides her top charts, awards, and applause, Billie’s album branched so much deeper than a simple album.
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is Billie’s exploration of intense and complex themes that encompass swirling emotions and unfathomable levels of vulnerability within personal relationships. This past album was a way deeper version of Billie, bringing back all her past, reconnecting herself with her struggles with heartbreak, insecurity, vulnerability, sexuality, and mature perspectives. Billie poured her heart and soul into this album, feeling for once that she truly and utterly deserved this Grammy.
Metaphorically, and literally, Billie laid out her every emotion on an originally untouched layer of her life. This album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, was the one true album she felt as if she deserved an award for, using this album to rip herself raw in front of the millions upon millions of monthly Spotify listeners, media-hungry press, conspiracy theorists, creeps, and anyone who bothered to touch the unfathomable level of human life poured into an album. Award by award, you saw her hope fade, you saw her smile drop and the gradual build of tears in her ocean blue eyes.
Billie was the youngest Grammy winner at the age of eighteen, winning for her album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Billie was beyond grateful, becoming the youngest Grammy winner ever. Despite the awards and titles she has earned, all have been for albums she didn’t feel the biggest emotional connection to.
Cowboy Carter, an album from Beyonce, won the Grammy this year for her twenty-seven pop style songs consisting of upbeat notes and excitable singing. Don’t get me wrong, Beyonce is deserving, but not how Billie and Swift were. Billie and Swift were both pouring their entire being into an album, only for it to be overlooked for an album with so little deeper level value that it could be considered “emotionally lack-luster.”
Fans, fellow artists, and people no matter what their beliefs, knew they were robbed of their rightful award for their beyond emotional performances. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT was nothing but an immaculately articulated masterpiece.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is a national icon of pop-culture known for her labyrinthine lyricism and artistic, rhetorical approach to much of her music. Swift has won 14 Grammys and has been nominated for the Grammy’s alone 58 times. On top of her Grammy’s, Swift has attended many other awards shows and rarely ever left empty handed without an award. She holds the record for most No. 1 hits on Billboard’s US Digital Song Sales chart.
This past year, Swift released her first double album The Tortured Poet’s Department. There is no doubt Taylor made history yet again, breaking Spotify listening records within just hours of the release. The Tortured Poets Department hit music streaming services on April 19th and within a week dominated the top spots of the billboard hot 100. Featuring songs like “Fortnight” and “The Alchemy,” Swift claimed the first 14 spots of the list, each song on the album placing at least somewhere on the hot 100.
The Tortured Poets Department dives into the trauma Swift faced from becoming a person of the limelight for so many years including her rise to fame. “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” focuses on the ways in which society can bring a person into the limelight just to bring them right back down. Much like Billie, Taylor poured her heart and soul and exposed the rawest parts of her life to the public within her album. Each lyric and each song revealed a dark part of Taylor’s life that cleared up the once “unfinished” story to many in the public eye.
Many fans watched the 67th annual Grammy’s award show live. As each winner was revealed for the six Grammy titles Swift was nominated for, Swifties began to lose hope. Swift seemed to be enjoying herself at the event despite the loss; however, many believe she was robbed of a deserving award due to the talent, raw emotion, and hard work Swift infused into one of her best albums yet.
While Cowboy Carter surely shocked many listeners and was catchy in its tune, it did not display the same sense of emotion and dedication to music as Billie and Swift. Beyonce surely broke the internet with her release, but so did Taylor. However, on top of Swift’s release, she managed to depict raw emotion, experience, heartbreak, and grief in a way that every listener can relate to. Not only did Swift successfully display her emotions on a piece of sheet music, but she also managed to do so in a way that appealed to its listeners and made a beautiful masterpiece that can be appreciated by a large spectrum of listeners’ preferences.
Ask Swifties who break down each lyric, each sound, and you’ll find Ms. Swift has released an album that explores the raw emotions of heartbreak, healing and everything in between. The Tortured Poet’s Department was nothing but deserving of Album of the Year.
