Billie Eilish may be the new resident princess of doom and gloom in the pop realm, but she had too much to smile about (or rather, from the look of her countenance, be embarrassed about) to live up to the expectation on Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, which already had a dark pall cast over them thanks not only to Kobe Bryant’s death, but to Deborah Dugan’s recent attempt to blow the whistle on the “boys’ club” politics of the Recording Academy before being ousted from her brief tenure. One that unveiled seemingly infinite shady dealings to her, including the conflicts of interest regarding how most musicians are nominated, with “secret committees” pushing nominations for those artists they already have a vested stake in (surely, this can be the only explanation for why Madame X was not nominated this year) as opposed to those artists that are actually, well, deserving.
Taking into account that one of the other allegations Dugan has made includes the fact that minorities are deliberately and consistently underrepresented (just ask Diddy, who called this out but then took his award for Industry Icon anyway), maybe there was a reason behind why Lizzo was briefly marked as the favorite to do a sweep of trophies before the Recording Academy, it seemed, veered toward the more politically viable Eilish. Not black or Hispanic, no, but at least youthful and a female, two very important boxes to tick at the moment. To underscore a certain point that Eilish was not necessarily the most deserving winner but the most worthwhile for the Recording Academy’s–and the music industry at large’s–purposes of wanting to come across as relevant and “edgy” as possible at a time when people are calling out how overtly it is being controlled by white male geriatrics (as usual), she engaged in a lackluster performance of “when the party’s over” (for fuck’s sake, what is it with pop stars needing to lower case their songs all the time now?). Granted, it’s a ballad, but still, she certainly didn’t imbue it with even half as much oomph as Demi Lovato’s own stripped down performance of “Anyone” (lent further import for being her first live appearance since overdosing back in 2018).
Yet possibly the most woeful element of Eilish “making Grammys history” primarily by virtue of her youth and being the first artist since Christopher Cross (yes, you read that correctly) to sweep the “Big Four” categories, was that it meant Lana Del Rey had to lose out in one of the few areas she was able to croon her way into (for Del Rey has never had the easiest time being accepted into the corporate spotlight–save for that time she did an H&M campaign right out the gate of her success). One such precious nomination being for Song of the Year. While, sure, in all fairness, it was the not-exactly-palatable-to-Top 40-airplay “Norman Fucking Rockwell” (“Mariners Apartment Complex” might have stood a better chance) that was selected for competition, did “Bad Guy” really deserve to usurp it solely for having a more rhythmic bassline? To add insult to Lana’s injury, when Eilish went up to collect her award for Album of the Year (the only other category LDR was considered in for Norman Fucking Rockwell), she specifically called out Ariana Grande’s thank u, next as the one that should have triumphed in this department (and yes, as usual, Grande delivered a consummate rendition of “imagine,” “7 Rings” and a few verses of “thank u, next” before toppling back into her “on-set” bed. She had to make up for the lost time of already boycotting the Grammys last year, after all.). Quite a slap in the face to someone she was once pictured being cradled by at the ASCAP Awards. Indeed, Del Rey has cradled Eilish’s career almost as much as, if not more than, her brother, Finneas O’Connell. Self-effacing Gen Z nature aside, Eilish was clearly happy for the work to be acknowledged, so well-received by the mainstream, and those who puppeteer its strings. Perhaps forgetting that Del Rey paved a very large chunk of the way for someone like Eilish to be so embraced to the point of smothering.
And sure, Eilish has gushed about her love for and influence by “Off to the Races” several times before, but that admission hardly feels like giving Del Rey her true and honest due. At thirty-four to Eilish’s eighteen, Del Rey might have been born not just to die, but also to parents that were invested in her success. Where Eilish is part of a generation that thinks drugs and alcohol are anything but chic, Del Rey developed a heavy drinking habit in her early teens that prompted her parents to send her to boarding school. Eventually, after attending the bougie (despite its Bronx location–kind of like where USC is located in L.A.) university that is Fordham, she ended up in a trailer park working on the demos for a first album. This salt-of-the-earth, “I came up the hard way” (like Mickey Pearson) backstory–ignore the part where her Daddy helped her out when needed along the way–is in more than slight contrast to Eilish being cushly homeschooled and encouraged to pursue whatever she wanted by troubadour progenitors.
Eilish was someone who had “cred” in spades at the outset of her career. But as time has worn on and the endorsement deals (#MYCALVINS) and now, the apex of corporate music filth, the Grammys, have followed, she seems to be devolving from the integrity she sought to create with far more rapidity than the time it took to establish it. Del Rey, on the other hand, has managed to sustain her on the fringe spirit by never quite cracking through the other side. The wall that divides the DIY from the decadent (case in point, her Grammy red carpet dress was bought from the mall, Billie was dressed head-to-toe in Gucci–a designer Del Rey just does commercials for when she feels like being “artsy” with Jared Leto).
Maybe everything was all off-kilter in the award-giving balance because of Taylor Swift, noticeably missing from the ceremony after being rumored to have pulled out of doing a surprise performance (hopefully of “The Man”) so as to stand in solidarity with Dugan–which could very well be why, from a political standpoint, no one could be bothered to toss a gramophone-shaped trophy her way. Or anyone else’s for that matter, other than Billie’s, who, despite what people want to believe about her “authenticity,” had a major leg up on getting into the business in a way that most aspiring musicians never could. In short, “Have your brother know someone in the music industry, release a track that gets picked up by an intern at Interscope who writes for a major blog and then have said intern push it up the chain of their employer.” At least Del Rey had to suffer the ills of performing at Arlene’s Grocery, as well as other venues in pre-yipster Williamsburg. Chillin’ comfortably in one’s L.A. bedroom does not, in contrast, a “coming up the hard way” story make. Nor does much of anything Gen Z “achieves.”
