The "Best Metal Performance" award was just given out at the 59th annual Grammy Awards. The award was just presented during the non-televised portion of the Grammys. As a quick refresher, here are the nominees:
Baroness – "Shock Me"
Gojira – "Silvera"
Korn – “Rotting In Vain”
Megadeth – "Dystopia"
Periphery – "The Price Is Wrong"
Megadeth ended up winning the award and Dave Mustaine joked it only took them 12 tries. Somebody in production must've messed up, because instead of playing "Dystopia," they played Metallica's classic hit "Master of Puppets." Pick up Dystopia on CD at Amazon for $7 or on ">iTunes for $9.99.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpvXR3ifvo[/youtube]
Update: Dave Mustaine has responded to the house band playing "Master of Puppets," and his response is savage.
Disturbed did not lose to Beyonce for Best Rock Performance. They lost out to David Bowie.
Gojira lost out on Best Rock Album to Cage the Elephant.
Metallica got a nomination for "Best Rock Song" for "Hardwired," alongside David Bowie and Twenty One Pilots. They will be performing their single "Moth Into Flame" with Lady Gaga, as was revealed earlier today.
Related: 10 Times The GRAMMYs Got Their Metal Award Winners Wrong
The likes of Metallica, Tool, Slipknot etc. have all rightfully scooped up awards, but there has also been years where the academy got it bafflingly wrong. Here are ten of the most outrageous examples. Read more
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK95lWHl7js[/youtube]
A few months ago, we spoke with The Recording Academy's Senior Vice President, Awards, Bill Freimuth, who revealed that rock is one of the largest umbrellas in GRAMMY voting fields.
"When you exclude metal, the rock category is one of our biggest umbrellas." Freimuth notes. "Not quite as broad as pop, but maybe the next up in terms of what constitutes rock – it can be blues rock, folk rock, ballads. All of that. I think what we found this year is that so many artists that were in rock or adjacent to rock were really taking more sonic risks this year than ever before, and it made for a really exciting dynamic landscape in that field."
We asked Bill to explain how exactly the voting works and he was very forthcoming. "Every one of our thirteen thousand members can vote in the general fields and then for the genre fields, like the rock field, you get to choose up to 15 categories of the remaining 80 to vote in. So people have to be really selective, and we say that one should only be voting in a category where they have expertise. So, presumably, the people who are voting in metal have expertise in metal."
When asked if theoretically a rapper can end up voting for metal in one of their 15 selected categories, Bill noted that he was led by their auditors to believe that doesn't happen much.
As for who is voting, Bill made it clear nobody from the record labels, unless they also share creative duties, is involved in the voting process. "Producers, engineers, songwriters, instrumentalists, vocalists, notes writers, video directors, they all have to be creatively involved. So if you're on the business side, you're not voting."
