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Three Fantastic, Underrated Albums that Should’ve Been Nominated at the Grammys

Daniel Wills

On November 10, 2023, the Grammy Awards released their choices for the 2024 Grammy Nominations. In recent years, however, the Grammy Awards have adopted the term “Scammies.” The new nickname has been given to them largely by unhappy fanbases who believe their favorite nominee was overshadowed, or as fans would say, “robbed.” Some examples of the most notorious and egregious “Scammies” have been Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly (2014) and Beyonce’s RENAISSANCE (2023), both causing huge amounts of backlash from the fandoms towards the Grammys. The former of these snubs even moved Frank Ocean, the R&B artist, to name it as “hands down one of the most ‘faulty’ TV moments” he’s ever seen. The popular artist, Zayn, has also spoken against the award show, claiming that it “creates and allows favoritism, racism, and networking politics to influence the voting process.”

Although I hold my own reservations surrounding the Grammys (particularly Lorde’s Melodrama snub in 2017), I was very pleased to see some nominations, including those for Lana Del Rey and the up-and-coming band Boygenius. Nevertheless, I believe many albums were under appreciated even earlier in the process, some of my picks not being nominated at all. In order to give attention to these artists and their work, here are some of my choices that should’ve been nominated for the 2024 Grammys, from least to most “robbed”:


3. Desire, I Want to Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek


The second album released by Caroline Polachek, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, begins with the 30-second, guttural wail of the first track “Welcome To My Island”. From that moment on, Polachek immerses the listener into the universe of Desire and the many bold stylistic choices she takes across each song, ranging from the bagpipes in “Blood and Butter”, the synths in “I Believe”, and the Spanish, flamenco-infused “Sunset”.

The magic and thrill of the album goes beyond its daring production, much of the beauty lying in Polachek’s enrapturing voice. Polachek is an opera-trained musician, and according to her teacher, Pamela Kuhn, she is able to make indiscernible switches between her head and chest voice, creating the effect of auto-tune. The woman has her own sound effects board in her diaphragm.


Through the striking visuals, it’s easy to imagine the summer headspace Polachek was in when she created the album. The album artwork features her crawling across a subway into the sandy welcome mat of her island. Apparently, much of it was inspired by Italy and Spain, and most particularly, their active volcanoes. She had become obsessed with watching live streams of the volcanoes, as they inspired the color palette of the album, and the “vital undying heat and chaos”. Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is just that: A confounding, desirable messy swirl of music that explodes in unforgettable ways.


2. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood


Despite the album And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow being released in November of 2022, the nominations were announced beforehand, and therefore is being evaluated under the 2023 cycle instead. The release is considered as the second instalment of a trilogy of albums, the first being Titanic Rising, an existentialist record filled with impending doom. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow finds us in the depth of that doom. The former of these albums even brought the New Yorker to give her the honorary title of “millennial Joni Mitchell.”

I would largely agree with this statement, considering the album feels like a folk artist holding a melodramatic concert on Mars. The combination of synths and Weyes Blood’s sonorous voice made me feel as though I was floating in space. However, this isn’t to detract from the heavy, substantial topics she touches on throughout the album. On the first track and lead single, “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody,” Weyes Blood references the collective realization people are beginning to have that something is shifting in the world, and not for the better. She touches on how isolating this feeling had become on the podcast “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso,” saying “Nobody could deny climate change anymore, and nobody could deny how isolating technology had become…Now it’s just mainstream to feel that way…We’re going through it together.”


But to me, the real masterpiece of the album is the song “God Turn Me Into a Flower,” which I implore everybody to go and listen to (and watch the accompanying music video). The song references the ancient myth of Narcissus, focusing on the dangers of self-obsession, and even more catastrophic, the alienation from ourselves. In the tale, Narcissus withers away, and in his place grows a flower. Rather than viewing it as a punishment, Weyes Blood sees it as an opportunity: An opportunity to reconnect with our roots, our delicacy, and our unassailable beauty.


1. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? by Kara Jackson


Although I have connected deeply with each of the albums that I’ve mentioned on this list, the most personal and memorable listening-experience for me was Kara Jackson’s debut, Why Does the Earth Give Us People To Love? Initially lured in by the ambiguous title and colorful artwork, I listened to the album not knowing much about it or the artist prior, except that it had been received extremely well by critics. The music critic publication Pitchfork named the album “Best New Music,” describing “her storytelling [as] masterful, filled with earnest lyricism and a knack for arresting imagery.”

Jackson begins almost each song with a simple guitar melody, but slowly introduces powerful harmonies and instruments that eventually flare up into mesmerizing sounds, accompanied by ruthless songwriting. The Chicago-native singer-songwriter was named the United States National Youth Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2020, and her lyrics humbly boast this title. Throughout the album, she accuses her ex-lovers of betrayal, denial, and self-indulgent egos. On “brain,” Jackson’s deep, assertive voice gradually becomes louder and more commanding, singing “If your fear is what comes first/You’ll run from love you deserve/I’ve got so much fear inside/You’ll give me yours and I’ll give you mine.” Jackson bends the genres and production in her music, creating a strange crossover between folk, country, and pop all in one.


She’s also not afraid to create uncomfortable feelings in her music. My favorite moment off of the album is the title track, “why does the earth give us people to love?” I had expected the song to be unforgiving, perhaps having to do with another relationship-gone-downhill. Instead, it was a vulnerable and raw tribute to her late best friend, Maya-Gabrielle, who died in 2016 due to cancer. She asks questions with no easy explanations, including “We’re only waiting our turn/Call that living?” Jackson angrily condemns the earth for its evil, taking away a beloved friend at the age of seventeen. She never answers the question she poses in the album’s title, and she continues to search for it. “Every year that you’re gone I feel like I learn something new about the way I love you.” The love Jackson describes is woven into the 13 songs on the album, love lost and love forgiven.


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