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David Bowie’s Blackstar wins five GRAMMY awards

By Paul Sinclair

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52

David Bowie‘s last album ★ (Blackstar) won all five GRAMMY awards it was nominated for at last night’s 59th award ceremony.

The 2016 album won in the following categories:

  • • Best Rock Performance
  • • Best Rock Song
  • • Best Alternative Music Album
  • • Best Recording Package
  • • Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

You can watch Donny McCaslin from the Blackstar band accept the award for Best Rock Performance, below:

Other GRAMMY wins of note include Bob Dylan‘s The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series  taking home the ‘Best Historical Album’ gong and Warner France’s Edith Piaf 1915-2015 100th anniversary box picking up the ‘Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package’ (beating Paul McCartney‘s Tug Of War deluxe, amongst others). The ex-Beatle could at least celebrate the fact that Ron Howard’s Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years film won in the ‘Best Music Film’ section.

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52 Comments

52 thoughts on “David Bowie’s Blackstar wins five GRAMMY awards”

  1. The Grammies are a load of arse.
    Adele is an arse.
    Anyone who doesn’t recognise the genius of Blackstar should stick to listening to less challenging music, such as Adele.

  2. Apart from Donny McCaslin and the band for ‘Best Rock Performance’ and Jonathan Barnbrook for ‘Best Recording Package’, who actually collected the awards on DB’s behalf? I assume there was no sign of Iman or Duncan Jones.

  3. Real shame Adele tired to get a little too clever with her George tribute. Rather than belting out ‘one more try’, ‘Jesus to a child’ or even ‘praying for time’, she decided to slow down ‘fastlove’ and turn it into – well, I’m not sure what is was, but it didn’t work. Shame – great backdrop of pictures but really poor song choice.

  5. I still haven’t forgiven the Grammys for their obvious slight in not nominating David’s ‘Blackstar’ album in the ‘Albums of The Year’ category instead of that idiot Justin Bieber’s album. It deserved to be Album of the Year as far as I’m concerned. Artistic merit outweighs sales but not at the Grammys ! Way to go Grammys, you’ve screwed up yet again !

  6. Always considered the Grammy’s as nothing more than a commercial marketing tool that only exists to shift as many “units” as possible, which of course has always made it entirely irrelevant.

    That said, clearly Bowie’s contributions – especially Blackstar – are so loaded with depth, genuine artistic content, beautiful melody and overall sonic and lyrical brilliance (all delivered in THAT voice) they simply tower over most of the other commercial dross that farcically walks away “awarded”. So just the fact that he kept lesser musical mortals out of the “top” spot is good enough for me.

  7. 5 Grammys , Festive 50 Number one song ……don’t recall these things happening whilst the greatest rock star ever was alive .
    It is only your own opinion of an artist that really matters, not some backslapping committee or fans reacting to someones demise.

    Oh and please can we stop mentioning these dreadful 21st century acts and their soap opera style tactics at every one of these shindigs , this place should be a sanctuary.

  8. The Grammys are a total piece of crap, pardon my french. They might as well be called World Music Awards as purchased by HRH Prince Of Monaco they are so fake!
    Indeed, Adele doesn’t know where to shove em (I could suggest a few places – btw what she got to cry about THIS TIME?), Lauryn Hill who, Beyonce, big cash-inners, while also Madonna only had a weird Live Recording in 1991 before finally winning in bloody 98. And Bowie only two. I mean, really, and yes, they do make up the categories each year! It’s totally ridiculous that I don’t even watch highlights of clips. I was unaware it was again that time of the year until they were on the gym screen showing what I assume was Adele in a green dress. I didn’t see anything Bowie-related.

  10. personally, i don’t watch nor care about award shows. i don’t rightly care what most think about art and certainly don’t think art needs awards, ribbons, trophies, etc. i try to keep an open ear and value the opinions of fellow audiophiles and music lovers. this kind of award politics smacks of much is what’s wrong in the music world. i’m reminded of Joni Mitchell’s album Turbulent Indigo winning best album – embarrassing, even if you’re a fan of that album.

  11. The Beatles never won a Grammy. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” lost to “Layla (Unplugged)” (yawn). Public Enemy lost to Young MC one year and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince another year. And of course, ladies and gentlemen… Milli Vanilli!…

    1. that was in the past, before the Grammys righted themselves and became the only music awards show that mattered…have not seen many embarrassing mistakes like that lately…no more Jethro Tull metal awards hahah

    2. The Beatles won six Grammys during their recording career, another three for the Anthology series and one last night for Eight Days A Week. Ten in all.
      I’ll certainly agree that awards are not what you remember The Beatles for. It’s their recorded work.
      I can’t stand awards shows, Robbie Williams and Adele? Wouldn’t touch them with me old barge pole.

  13. I’m very happy David Bowie was acknowledged for his album, ‘Blackstar’ last night at the Grammy Awards. But honestly, I don’t find too much integrity with the program. It seems awards are given to those with the biggest selling albums, in which case the event should be renamed “The Biggest Money-Maker Awards”. Sadly, the judges seldom truly consider the merit of musicianship, song craft, or originality unless the recording artist is deceased or near death.

    1. it’s ONLY about musical merit, not sales…yes some big selling records are awarded, but ONLY if there is art in it…I didn’t see any bland shallow undeserving records getting nominated or awarded last night…

    2. Actually, the Grammys are based solely on musical MERIT, not sales…yes Adele won, but “25” was widely acclaimed as well as it sold, and no she was NOT AN ARSE (whatever gave you that idea?? She defended Gregg Kurstin, her co-writer/co-producer & killer alt-pop artist in his own right, after the show cut him off, and she wanted to get her brilliant performance of George Michael’s “Fastlove” right when she felt she was off, out of respect to George. AND she felt she did not deserve the Album Of The Year Grammy for “25”, saying it belonged to Beyonce and her genius “Lemonade” album because it was a better piece of work and much more profound and meaningful to Adele…and yes, it WAS a better record than “25”. At least both “Lemonade” and “Blackstar” were nominated for multiple awards…”25″ shoulda been in the 2015 awards last year, not last night’s, but it missed the cutoff date in 2015. Great that Bowie won all 5 he was nominated for…yes it shoulda been up for best album of the year as well, over frikking Justin BIEBER. Overall, the show was on-point and a lot of fun…yes there were some serious gaffes in past years, but they got it mostly right last night and in recent years…the only thing I did not get with was Chance The Rapper because of all his religious Jesus talk, which I found offensive and imposing…the anti-Trump scribes by A Tribe Called Quest and friends (and Katy Perry) were all incredible, and lastly, James Corden was a hoot and the best, funniest host in years, no offense to LL Cool J, who was pleasant and nice but kinda boring.

  15. These awards are more or less irrelevant when consider that Adele has now won 15 Grammys but before last night DB had won a grand total of two.

    1. I’d been unaware of Bowie’s lack of Grammys. It is preposterous when you consider some of the nonentities that have won them. Having said that he was never the kind of artist that needed that sort of validation. Another one to file in the ‘ridiculous’ category is the fact that Ridley Scott has never won a best director Oscar.

      1. And neither did Hitchcock. Oscars, Brits, Grammys, are all geared to what’s popular (for the awards that count for something) and that is certainly no measure of greatness. Most UK No 1 singles in the 70s were terrible examples of songs. Same in the 80s. It’s weird when a truly great record (Ghost Town to pick a random example) got to No 1. Like where were the people with no taste that week? On holiday somewhere?

  17. Whether he died or not does not matter. Bowie was still making innovative , emotionally driven music til the end. He was still a genius and I am fortunate to have seen him live in Pittsburgh PA three times. DJ Berexa

    1. I think they make up the categories as they go along. Who remembers Annie Lennox winning ‘best female artist’ before she was a female artist!

      1. Much like the Brits in the eighties and nineties. Kate Bush and Annie Lennox were nearly always guaranteed a nomination regardless of whether or not they’d released anything.

        1. That’s because the Grammy’s consider you to be new when you become worthy of their good grace and attention. Before that you were presumably a worthless nothing. More strictly, their new artist rule is something like”has released a few things so far but not too many, and made it big with this one.”

      1. She gets on my nerves almost as much as Mariah Carey – and that’s saying a lot! And their musical output is just as bad IMO.

        I felt that Blackstar winning five Grammy’s went mostly unnoticed. But then again, with Adele breaking her Grammy and asking Beyonce (who now has become the mother of Christ it seems, judging from that dreadful performance) to be her mommy, who has time for a real artist?

  22. On the more general subject of all things Bowie, the UK Royal Mail will be issuing ten special stamps on 14 March.

    Three First Class album cover stamps:
    – Hunky Dory
    – Aladdin Sane
    – Heroes

    Three £1.52 album cover stamps:
    – Let’s Dance
    – Earthling
    – Backstar

    Additional sheet of four concert stamps
    – Ziggy Stardust Tour, 1973, London
    – Stages Tour, 1978, Frankfurt
    – Serious Moonlight Tour, 1983, Brussels
    – Reality Tour, 2004, Isle of Wight
    (with sheet border showing the Glass Spider Tour, 1987)

    There will also be various limited edition packs and the First Day Covers will be postmarked SW9 (for Brixton).

  23. It’s such an awful album after suffering the mp3 I listed my vinyl on ebay and guess what, it’s not sold. Not just his worst album but the worst album I have ever bought. The only reason its won any awards is because it was the last album he released before he sadly passed away.

      1. I was suffering at the same time as listening. It’s awful but that is just MHO. It baffles me as to why anyone would think it is as good as his back catalogue. TBF Bowie fans would say it was a classic if he was reading the phone book (if such a thing still exists). If anyone wants to buy my vinyl copy it’s on ebay with hundreds of others!

        1. Well it baffles me why anyone would fail to see how fantastic it is :-)

          Admittedly it is not an album chock-full full of catchy pop melodies a la Hunky dory but if you like your Bowie to be innovative, challenging, experimental and forward-looking (while still containing those Bowie trademarks of great singing, quirky arrangements and strong melodies) then Blackstar ticks all the boxes.

          By the way – the previous album The Next Day was far from being any of the above; not a great Bowie album and not really even a great album (imho).

          Incidentally notice how many of those vinyl copies are still sealed suggesting the owners have not even played them (possibly bought initially in the hope of turning a fast buck – or maybe that’s just me being cynical).

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