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Saturday Deluxe / 19 November 2022

Grammy nomination round up + ‘Thriller’ update

By Paul Sinclair

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45

ABBA Reloaded

ABBA with lots to celebrate as SDE rounds up Grammy nominations

The 2023 Grammy Award nominations were announced this week and while it’s mostly a load of old tosh, SDE always takes a keen interest in a few specific categories and artists.

First off, ABBA are again recognised this year after a lifetime of being ignored by The Recording Academy. I say ‘again’ because the first single from 2021’s Voyage album, ‘I Still Have Faith In You’, was nominated for Record of the Year last year. Quite how that song was nominated for the 64th Grammy Awards and ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’ gets nominated for the same category this year – when both songs were released on 2 September 2021 – is something of a mystery.

Anyway, ABBA didn’t win last year, but they have a better chance of picking up a gong this time, since they have four nominations for the 65th Grammy Awards:

  • Record of the Year: Don’t Shut Me Down
  • Album of the Year: Voyage
  • Best Pop Duo/group Performance: Don’t Shut Me Down
  • Best Pop Vocal Album: Voyage

Norah Jones gets her 18th Grammy Nomination – Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album – for I Dream Of Christmas (Extended). Diana Ross’ Thank You is in the same category.

Best Rock Performance includes Beck’s cover of Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’. This stirred some controversy in late September, since it was used in an NFL advert, prompting Young to post this less than cryptic image on Instagram reminding his fans that the writer of ‘This Note’s For You’ is ‘sponsored by nobody’. This same category includes The Black Keys, Bryan Adams and Ozzy Osbourne featuring Jeff Beck.

Red Hot Chili Peppers (‘Black Summer’) and The War On Drugs (‘Harmonia’s Dream’) are two notable nominees in the Best Rock Song category while Elvis Costello’s The Boy Named If is one of six album nominated for Best Rock Album.

The never-ending categories include Best Alternative Music Performance, in which you’ll find the Artic Monkeys (‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’) and Florence + The Machine (‘King’), while Björk (Fossora) and Arcade Fire (WE) both get nods for Best Alternative Music Album.

Shaggy’s Sting-produced Com Fly Wid Mi – which is an album of Reggae-style Frank Sinatra covers – is nominated for Best Reggae Album. Sting and Shaggy’s previous collaboration, 44/876, won this category at the 61st Grammys in February 2019, so they’ll be hoping to repeat that success.

The Package, Notes, Historical section of the Grammys is most pertinent to SDE, since it concerns reissues and box sets and packaging. Spiritualized’s ‘Everything Was Beautiful’ is nominated for Best Recording Package meanwhile Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package includes the deluxe edition of They Might Be Giant’s Book album and In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81 ’82 ’83, which is the Grateful Dead’s 17CD box set celebrating early 80s performances in New York City, is also in the same category.

Bob Mehr is nominated in the Best Album Notes category for his work for Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 20th anniversary reissue and the same album gets another nomination for Best Historical Album alongside Blondie’s Against The Odds.

Best Immersive Album is probably one of the most disappointing categories. Ricky Kej and Stewart Copeland’s ‘Divine Tides’ is nominated (Eric Schilling was the immersive mix engineer), and so is Christina Aguilera’s Aguilera (Jaycen Joshua, immersive mix engineer), but Steven Wilson’s work on Tears For Fears’ The Tipping Point is not recognised, which is really disappointing. In fact, despite 91 categories, there’s no place at all for Tears For Fears, The Tipping Point and the various singles pulled from it. You’d also think that Giles Martin’s Atmos work on The Beatles’ Let It Be would be a shoe-in for this category but it’s not nominated. Stephen Lipson’s immersive work on xPropaganda’s The Heart Is Strange is also not recognised although he produced Hans Zimmer’s score for the James Bond film No Time To Die, which is nominated for Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media.

Check out the full nomination list at the Grammy website

Michael Jackson’s Thriller gets a Dolby Atmos Mix

The Michael Jackson Thriller 40 reissue came out on Friday and after what looked like it could be some frustrating delays to the MoFi formats – the SACD and the MoFi UltraDisc One-Step vinyl box set – did actually ship from the official store yesterday.

This reissue campaign is hard to understand. The ‘main’ format is an extremely modest 2CD set that brings together some new demos but decides to ignore other era-relevant audio such as extended mixes or even the ‘Billie Jean’ home demo. They’ve missed a golden opportunity to bring everything together under one roof and while Sony have chosen to license out the audiophile editions to MoFi, what has emerged in recent days is that there is actually a new Atmos Mix which is very good indeed. You’ll find it on Apple Music, but of course it’s not available physically.

Read more about the Thriller reissue

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45 Comments

45 thoughts on “Saturday Deluxe / 19 November 2022”

  1. The Thriller 40th deluxe set is trash. Don’t waste your money on it, the demo disc sounds like a bad bootleg, muffled, drop outs, etc, MJ was one of the biggest recording acts of all time and I’m supposed to believe that his demo recordings are more lo-fi than The Ramones demos? Not sure what the strategy is here unless someone is holding the master tapes hostage, or tapes were somehow destroyed along the way, whatever the issue, the results are terrible, one of the worst demo discs by a major artist that I’ve ever heard, the compilers should be ashamed. The digital release adds the horrible 30th remixes and the original 12” mixes, but that is streaming and digital, not really deluxe. Maybe it’s a Sony thing, just complete apathy, like George Michael’s reissues. I give Thriller 40 zero stars.

    1. Zero’s a wee bit mean. Could’ve been a lot better but ‘She’s Trouble’ is a belter of a tune and was previously unavailable in good quality. That’s worth a couple of stars at least.

      1. I imagine MJ had a bigger budget for his demos than most bands of the era had for proper albums, produced by Quincy Jones, there is no reason that disc two should not be sonically amazing, and my rating has nothing to do with the quality of the songs. It just sounds like they pressed a complied bootleg of cassette dibs and never bothered to access the master tapes. Carousel is a muffled mess that fades early, there is no excuse, the full version of the same recording already has gotten released and does not sound like a fans cassette dub. This is not some obscure r&b artist, only the biggest pop star of the 80’s. How did this get a pass?

  2. Well……. whatever you think of the relevance or not of the Grammys I still hope the greatest pop group of all time get the recognition they so richly deserve. ABBA Voyage is a wonderful album and Don’t Shut Me Down is pure ABBA gold. It would have been a UK number 1 if it weren’t for the absolutely RIDICULOUS bollocks of the so called Official Charts company’s completely unfathomable means of ‘calculating’ singles chart positions. Bring back pure sales and release more physical singles!!!!

  3. The thing about the Grammy’s is once you gain a certain world status in the pop and rock world, you seem to gain a louder voice when it comes to the Grammy nominations. Beyonce, Adele, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran & Coldplay spring to mind. It also looks great if they come and perform on the show.

    I’m not entirely sure about the nomination process but I remember reading that after The Weeknd being completely snubbed the other year, he asked not to be considered in the future. I don’t blame him, Blinding Lights is a catchy pop tune with its synth lead. It seemed to be everywhere radio, tv, supermarkets and was the biggest selling UK single of 2020.

    It’s difficult to comment on the immersive section as I haven’t heard the nominated albums. It may be disappointing that none of the SDE releases were listed but were they put forward for nomination and what was the deadline?

  5. “Shaggy’s Sting-produced ‘Com Fly Wid Mi’ – which is an album of Reggae-style Frank Sinatra covers”

    Good grief! Is it April 1st already?

    Did I miss Christmas and New Year?

    Is Twitter still alive?

    The spelling/pronunciation of the title is enough to make me shove dynamite in my ears!

    1. If it was sting saying it like that would be dodgy, but it’s Shaggy and the title is a phonetic representation of the Patois and accent he uses on some of his songs. A la Slade as pointed out by Paul M.

  6. Clicked on the link and read:
    2023 GRAMMYs: How The New Best Song For Social Change Special Merit Award Inspires Positive Global Impact & Celebrates Message-Driven Music and How To Qualify
    Nearly threw up and hurriedly closed the link.

  7. Wouldn’t you think that after the ‘Michael’ and ‘Xscape’ fiascos, the Jackson estate might have learned something? ‘Thriller 40’ is just one big yawn.

    1. Yeah, Bad 25 in 2012 was ok, but we’ve had nothing in over 13 years. Is there a definitive reason as to why they won’t dig deep into the man’s musical legacy?

    2. I’m sure I recall a statement before the release of “Michael” that there was enough material for 3 albums or something like that, I wonder why there’s been nothing since Xscape

      1. There was supposedly a contract for TEN albums signed. But with the controversy that some of the songs on “Michael” might actually feature an imitator (complicated story), I can see why they backed down from that.

  8. I got my copy of the Thriller MOFI SACD yesterday. I had preordered it a while back and literally had forgotten about it so it was a pleasant surprise when the music retail shop sent me an email early this week saying that the SACD was ready to be delivered. I have yet to play it although i did notice that the SACD is encoded in stereo and not in surround sound format (I had somehow mistakenly assumed it was in surround).
    Which brings me to the Dolby Atmos mix in Apple Music. I did get a chance to play the album in Dolby Atmos and it was very good indeed. The separation seemed to bring more life and weight to each track, especially apparent in Wanna Be Starting Something and Billie Jean. The Dolby Atmos mix is of course not comparable to newer albums like ‘The Weekend’s (After Hours / Blinding Lights) which seems to envelope the whole room, maybe because they are newer recordings.
    I would buy the ATMOS SDE version of Thriller if it was made available. So far, I have bought the SDE Atmos versions of Tears For Fears (The Tipping Point), Shakeaspeare Sistger (Hormonally Yours) and Pre-Ordered Orbital (Optical Delusion). I always feel good buying phyical copies of surround albums (not only in Atmos but bluray and SACD as well) since the streaming giants could one day remove our favorite surround tracks for good and not make it available to us (in my humble opinion anyway).

  9. The sound quality on some of the Thriller bonus tracks is appalling. ‘Carousel’ has been released officially before and is even on YouTube with a copy that makes this one sound like a dodgy mp3 of a cassette of a worn out record.  How did they manage to use a worse version than they’ve already released?

    ‘Behind The Mask’ is another one that sounds particularly flat. Yes, it’s a demo, but if they had some sort of multitrack to use the vocals on a remix in 2010 you think they’d be able to polish the mix even a little bit.

    It all seems so half-arsed. I am not thrilled.  

    1. Too much back clapping let alone the results clearly decided by “the industry”.
      Just like the Brits although at least with that you may get the token off kilter artist…

    2. From 2000 on, it became worse and worse. Last time I tried to watch it was when Pink and Nate Reuss (who was drunk, high, or both), did a decent job on Just Give Me A Reason. Even when the performers were all ones I liked, the show is usually pretty mundane. It’s at the point where you will hear: “And the Grammy for best Vocal Performance goes to Auto Tune Preset # 201.494.”

  12. The “Thriller” 40 cd reissue is underwhelming,the demos unremarkable,though to hear the Vincent Price free version of the title track (“Starlight,”)is great;they got it right in the end.
    The digital version adds some more demos,extended versions and unfortunately those piss poor modern remixes,but as the SDE logo says its (not) holding the music in your hands),so it doesn’t count.

    1. The 40 cd version of Thriller would be amazing.Where would they find so much content? Ha ha! Just one minor mistake in typo and the 40 yr aniversary edition becomes the 40 cd version!

  13. Pleased to see that Taylor Swift is also nominated for 4 Grammy Awards this year:
    Song Of The Year / Best Country Song / Best Song Written For Visual Media / Best Music Video,
    and Jack Antonoff for ‘Producer Of The Year’ too!

  14. The Tears For Fears LP is the best of the year IMO and it is ridiculous that it’s got zero nominations. They need to get the Qatar’s world cup negotiators on their team.

    1. I agree for sure. A lot of aging artists put out some great stuff in the last eligibility period. Tears For Fears would be best. Duran Duran’s Future Past is close, Def Leppard’s Diamond Star Halos probably a few too many ballads and clunkers, but mostly a solid effort. Damn shame no real R&B exists anymore. Would love for a new Stevie Wonder album, but it appears he will not release any of the 200 or more songs in his vault, or the 50 or so recorded in the last 10 years. I’d welcome an AWFUL Stevie Wonder album of 1970-1982 songs right now! George Michael? Bring it on, but I’m dreaming, his estate/agents/managers could care less. Congrats Roland and Curt, most of my friends who are not even TFF fans agree that The Tipping Point is a true piece of work!

    2. Between TFF, Marillion, Midnight Oil, Alan Parsons and Porcupine Tree, this was a surprisingly fruitful year for acts I love (and are unlikely to get nominated for Grammys).

  15. I wouldn’t worry about people you like not getting one of these awards, Paul – apart from all the politics and peculiarities referred to by others, there is a huge US skew about it. You or I (or anyone else in the ‘rest of the world’) could write a colossal labour of love booklet essay for something – including releases by acts with little or modest historical traction in the US but great importance in the UK/Europe – but the Grammy for ‘Best liner notes’ (a pretty ludicrous category in itself, like many) will still go to someone from Down Beat or Rolling Stone for 800 words of non-primary research in a US major label reissue of something by an A-list heritage act from the US. Likewise, all those pet peeve omissions you mention are UK acts/releases. One of my own favourite artists, John McLaughlin – a colossus of jazz / fusion with a 60+ year career – won a Grammy in 2018 for ‘best improvised solo’… for a pretty unremarkable recording that had happened to have been released that year. It was clearly an award clumsily recognising his body of work – the best of which had been overlooked long ago – made even more clumsy by the presenter getting his name wrong. Like the absurd ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ – with people online getting terribly worked up about nonentities getting ‘in’ and their fave act being ‘overlooked’ (again, a huge US/rest of world issue at play there among other things) – it’s just not worth getting annoyed by the Grammys. We like what we like, and if a lovingly crafted release comes along in the area of our interest, we are grateful and appreciative. That’s enough. :-)

    2. Not sure I agree. I’ve always found it a strange decision that they opted to go verse verse verse chorus chorus chorus in the video. The bigger omissions for me are the full version of ‘the Lady In My Life’ (which has leaked in average quality) and ‘Nightline’.

      But there are far too many omissions. I got the 2CD set just to hear the tunes that had never leaked before but they’re a bit underwhelming, aside from ‘Trouble’ which is great.

  17. With the recent surround mixes of the biggest selling album of all time (Thriller) and an album by the biggest band of all time (Revolver) only being available via streaming, it does not bode well for the future of surround sound in a physical format. It makes me even more grateful for the SDE surround series! Paul, any hints as to when the next one is coming? ;-)

    1. I’m coming to a new conclusion for the reason why the major labels are not releasing stuff physically in surround/atmos – it’s the fact they don’t even know it’s possible…

      They’re probably unaware of the poor lossy codec on streaming (with Dolby Digital+) versus the fact that you can play it back digitally in it’s full lossless fidelity by .mkv/mka downloads or via blu ray.

      I doubt they could ever get more money by streaming at 0.03 pence per stream than by releasing it physically… The music industry has never failed to miss an open goal and screw everything up.

      Let’s release some more cassettes…

  18. The Grammys have so many categories,then sub categories,then sub categories of the sub category etc ad infinitum … that they are just a load of overblown toss.
    I would swear some categories are just invented so they can give an award to an artist they like.

    They also so pigeonhole certain artists that they get nominated for a certain category based solely on their past work even if this year they released music that was definitely not for the category they have just been pigeonhole nominated for.So a Country star remains a Country star even if they release a dance record,and a dance act remains a dance act even if they release a country record.Everybody is categorised to an inch of their life with little variation allowed.

    1. Not to mention that the Grammys have long been more about sales and industry politics than actual artistic merit. I still remember what Steve Simels wrote in Stereo Review once: “Why did they name the Grammys after the older gramophone rather than the modern phonograph? Because it would be too obvious.”

      In the days before iTunes, I worked at a company that generated the 30-second preview clips for online music retailers (Tower, Amazon, CD Now, CD Universe, etc.). One year (probably 1999) we had a little competition in the production department to see who could correctly pick that year’s Grammy winners; I ended up picking most of my section’s choices, most of which I based on such reasoning as “so and so didn’t necessarily have the best album [among the nominees] this year, but the Academy will give him the Grammy anyway to recognize his body of work”. Needless to say, we won; nobody else was even close.

      No way I could do that now, since I haven’t been very interested in current pop music for several years. But the Academy probably works in much the same way now as it did 20 years ago.

      1. “Why did they name the Grammys after the older gramophone rather than the modern phonograph?”

        Because people probably wouldn’t tune in to watch the Phonnys.

  20. An SDE Atmos blu-ray of Thriller would probably cause the website to need a nuclear power station to keep it up. (Kinda Simon Le Bon 1983 lyric analogy…). It’s a strange reissue really, no doubt the ten demos add more to the story but seems widely held the two best unreleased songs are missing. Disc 2 probably could have held those demos and 12s happily and I would have ordered, otherwise I’ll wait for the inevitable price drop.

      1. Assuming he means Hot Street and Nite Line, which was eventually given to the Pointer Sisters for their 1983 album Break Out. Amusingly it wasn’t even a single for them either, so no one seemed particularly enamored with it.

        The silence from those who put this together is deafening. I’ll be getting it because there are a few new tracks, but compared to Prince’s reissue compaign, this is a complete massive embarrassment. A zillion unreleased tracks and they can’t even manage to put out the ones fans want most.

        This should have been at least 3 discs.

        1. I do think, as Paul put it in the original announcement post, that this is more a case of Sony testing the waters. Is there still demand for actual MJ content post ‘Leaving Neverland’ documentary? I’m a big fan, so I’ll buy ‘Thriller 40’ regardless (have preordered SACD and MoFi vinyl), but it’s fair to say Prince has less controversy (ironic) attached to his name – at least in this day and age.

        2. It makes me very nervous about the fact that SONY is taking over Prince’s catalog. The reissues they’ve done for him up to this point have been pretty uninspired (mostly just adding fan-club releases or promo versions). Warner was making up for their tratement of him throughout his career by putting together some excellent reissues. I shudder at how badly SONY will probably mess it up.

  21. Great article Paul. Undoubtedly the man will be considered beyond his prime artistically and commercial lily but I suspect that Shaggy Com Fly Wid Mi must be the first Grammy nominated album to receive no form of physical release whatsoever – no Cd, vinyl or that emerging new format cassette. Perhaps we’ll get an 8-track version.

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