I love music, and for some reason I'm always confusingly drawn to watching the Grammys, even though I'm more and more dissatisfied with the whole popular music scene with each passing year. This year, since my wife and I are going without TV for a while, I had to find some highlights to watch online (Mumford and Sons were playing with the Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan - what else could I do?). This was probably good, since I wasn't tempted to waste any more time on the awards than was absolutely necessary. I thought the Mumford/Avett/Dylan performance was pretty cool by the way, even though Dylan's vocals are sounding a little rough.Denny Burk wrote a great article reflecting on the cultural significance of the Grammys (you can read it here), and says a lot of things far better than I could. I thought the article was just great, and helped me wrap my head around some of the brilliance, and absurdity that I saw as I watched some highlights of the whole thing. Below is one of my favorite quotes from Burk's article.
In as much as the Grammys are a cultural barometer, I saw no surprises in last night’s spectacle. There were the flickers of image-bearing brilliance, but there was also the darkness of God-ignoring art. I was reminded of just how needy we all are of real beauty and real truth (which are of a piece in my view). I was also reminded that we are a people in desperate need of the only real profundity that there is in the world—the gospel of King Jesus crucified and raised for sinners-from-birth.
