It's deep in the heart of award season and I just made the mistake of watching the Grammies.What a load of tosh.
I know it's a few days old now so hardly worth complaining about, but if you judged the state of music by these awards then things would appear to be going downhill fast. The plane has crashed into the mountainside.

Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga – gimme a break.
I did notice a few bright spots on an otherwise bleak horizon, with lifetime awards going to Leonard Cohen and Loretta Lynn. You might have missed that since it took about 25 seconds of the entire broadcast. They got Seal to announce Cohen's award. I guess it was a logical choice since both are non-Americans. I can't think for the life of me what otherwise connects them. Seal gave a list of five of Lenny's songs and then said: 'I say ‘hallelujah' that Leonard Cohen has won a Lifetime Achievement Award, and here's Pink!” Lynn's award took about the same length of time.
Perhaps dear old Loretta was too aged for the assembled revellers to remember, especially when spunky young Taylor Swift was there. Between emotional gasping Taylor thanked her record company for allowing her to write every song on her album. I can't imagine Leonard Cohen doing that. As he has been fond of pointing out in recent interviews, the album containing 'Hallelujah” was regarded so negatively by his record company that they didn't even release it in America.
One more quick slap at the Grammies: Steve Martin won Best Bluegrass Album. Yes, Steve Martin, the silver-haired comedian, who does indeed play very good banjo. But Best Bluegrass Album? This follows that long tradition of Grammy Awards that includes Petula Clark's Rock ‘n' Roll Grammy, Elvis Presley's Gospel Grammy, Jethro Tull's Metal Grammy and Will Smith's many Rap Grammies – the award goes to whoever people have actually heard of.
New Zealand music awards, be they Tuis, Silver Scrolls, or whatever, often show a similar desire to recognise the well-known and favour sales over strict artistic merit. So it's nice to know that there is now an award specifically 'acknowledging creativity and musicianship regardless of sales figures or genre”. It is the Taite Music Prize, named after Dylan Taite who was for years one of the country's most respected music journalists. This week the finalists were announced.
It's an award for an album released in the last year and the finalists are The Checks for Alice By The Moon, David Dallas for Something Awesome, Kerretta for Vilayer, Laurence Arabia for Chant Darling and Shapeshifter for The System is a Vampire. All very interesting albums and worth checking out if you haven't heard them. The winner will be announced at the end of March.
And it wouldn't be right to sign off this column without a mention of the sad passing of Pauly Fuemana, who died on January 31, aged 40. Most people know of Pauly through his hit with OMC – the Otara Millionaires Club – ‘How Bizarre' but I suspect many don't realise quite how extraordinary the success of that record was. The song is, in fact, the most successful song in New Zealand music history.
During the late-90s attendees at the annual APRA Awards, which recognise the country's songwriters, got thoroughly sick and tired of it. In 1996 ‘How Bizarre' won both the Most Performed Work in New Zealand Award and Most Performed Work Overseas Award, a feat only achieved by Crowded House's ‘Weather with You' in recent history. Then it continued to receive the Most Performed Work Award for the next three years, until Neil Finn's ‘Don't Dream it's Over' in 2000, a win that came simply because the song was used in a tourism ad.
But it was overseas that the song made the greatest impact. After getting to number one on the NZ and Australian charts, ‘How Bizarre' went to number one in eight countries and top 10 in 15 others – amazing stuff. It was the most played song on United States radio stations in 1997.
Hats off to Pauly for doing the virtually impossible. And condolences to his family and many friends.