On February 7, 2027, the eyes of the music world will be on Los Angeles as the 69th Grammy Awards are presented. Barring any changes to last year’s award structure, the Recording Academy will hand out six specific trophies in the Rock, Metal and Alt Rock fields.
Of course, contenders in those categories are also eligible for the broader “big four” prizes for Record, Album, and Song of the Year, along with Best New Artist. But let’s be real. There is zero chance that a rock performer (and certainly not a metal or alt performer) is going to claim one of those prizes. They are now the exclusive purview of pop, hyperpop, and hip hop.
Those Big Four categories are also where younger artists are more likely to find recognition. Perhaps not when compared to some categories – hip hop nominated plenty of artists in their 20s last year, like Latto, Jordan Adetunji, Playboi Carti, and Doechii. Rock and its affiliate Grammy genres skew a lot older.
And like that slow-moving ship in Speed 2: Cruise Control (if you’ve never seen it, consider yourself blessed), the 69th Grammys could be headed for a similar travesty.
The Grammys are doing everything they can to ensure Rock music withers and dies
I go to a lot of concerts. And I see plenty of old guys performing rock and roll. Last year, I saw Jonathan Richman and Willie Nile. I saw Dinosaur Jr, who should probably just remove the “Jr” by this point. Nobody will mind.
They all put on great shows. I’m not giving them any Grammys (though Richman would be a perennial contender if they had a prize for “Quirkiest Performance"). But I’m glad they’re still around, cranking out loud rock music.
I probably saw four to five times as many shows performed by younger rock bands, with members in their 20s or early 30s. International names like Wet Leg and Viagra Boys, along with plenty of smaller regional and local acts, in my mid-Atlantic home base.
As a child of the ‘70s, I am willing to accept that rock & roll is no longer the dominant cultural force in the music world. It hasn’t been for many decades. What I will not accept is that it is a dead genre.
But the Grammys would have you believe otherwise.
It begins with their convoluted award structure, which a team of monkeys working around the clock could not decipher. I’ll keep this short.
The Recording Academy hands out six statuettes in the Rock, Metal & Alternative Music sub-category. These are for “best performance” in, as you probably guessed, Rock, Metal, and Alt genres. Rock and Alt get a Best Album. Metal does not. Rock also gets Best Song.
Why those six? I’m sorry. I am not fielding questions at this time.
Now, though there are indeed rules regarding in which field a particular candidate will be considered, no one understands them on a practical level. The artists can self-select and may use some game theory to improve their odds, with little relationship to what their music actually sounds like.
To wit – Baltimore’s own Turnstile received nominations in five of the six categories last year. They won for Metal Performance and Rock Song, came up short in Rock Performance, Alt Performance, and Rock Song, and weren’t nominated in Alt Album.
I should say here that Turnstile’s outstanding showing last year would seem to nullify my central thesis. They are, by most standards, a relatively young band. And British rocker Yungblud, who was nominated thrice and won once last year, is even younger. So the Grammys are not completely ignoring newer performers in the rock field.
They do tend to prefer war horses, though. The other three winners last year were all performers from my generation – the likes of Trent Reznor and Robert Smith.
Taken in isolation, the 68th Grammy Awards do not make my case very well because there is a genuine balance between new and old. But look at the 67th Awards, handed out in 2025.
The winners were all in their 40s or older. I have absolutely no problem with all three awards that were claimed by Annie Clark, AKA St. Vincent. She deserved them all. She is in her early 40s, neither old nor young. My biggest complaint is that she failed to win a fourth prize that year.
She was beaten out for Best Rock Performance by the Beatles’ “Now and Then.”
This is the most egregious mistake I have seen the Grammys make in the past decade. I don’t care so much that Clark didn’t win. Any of the other nominees – even the older ones like the Black Keys or Green Day – would have been just fine.
But “Now and Then” is a gimmicky song graded on a massive curve. It is not in the top 100 of all-time Beatles songs. Though it represents an impressive technological achievement, it is hardly a great rock performance.
And by the way, the Academy also saw fit to nominate it for Record of the Year. That’s right – they finally honor a rock song with a nomination in a Big Four category, and it turns out to be a mediocre Beatles song that was nothing special when it was recorded more than 60 years ago.
Best Rock Album that year went to the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds. I’ll choose my words carefully here because I have pissed off people in the past with this opinion. It’s not that Hackney Diamonds is a bad album. It’s pretty good.
I think it has some very good tracks along with some modest numbers. If I’m ranking it amongst all Stones albums, it is low middle. If I’m ranking it among all rock albums released in 2024, it’s toward the back end of the top 40.
It was not the best rock album of the year unless you once again grade on a massive curve or else award mega bonus points for nostalgia. To my ears, both Romance by Fontaines D.C. and No Name by Jack White were significantly better rock albums amongst the nominees, while the other four nominees were also superior.
As were newer, fresher rock music released by M.J. Lenderman, Font, the Last Dinner Party, Mannequin Pussy, and by our own local favs, Ekko Astral. I have listened to each of those albums more times in the past year than I have listened to Hackney Diamonds. (Maybe that’s not saying much since the number for the Stones’ album is zero.)
OK, so maybe 2025 was a weird anomaly. It’s just that I am scared to death it is about to happen again.
Don’t be surprised if, come Feb 7, 2027, an 84-year-old Paul McCartney is battling it out for the rock Grammys with Mick and Keith – combined age at the time – 166.
Before you accuse me of ageism, let me say that simply nominating or even awarding the prizes to these octogenarians is fine in and of itself. If they are worthy, by all means. I have heard the first two singles from the Stones’ Foreign Tongues album, and I like them better than most of the cuts from Hackney Diamonds. That doesn’t mean the entire album will be good or great. We’ll have to wait and see.
And Macca’s first two singles from the upcoming The Boys of Dungeon Lane are downright delightful. That doesn't mean they suggest an album that will rank in my top five or ten for this year, but again, let’s wait and see.
And when we do eventually get to hear the albums, there is nothing wrong with enjoying them in their larger context. Dungeon Lane, in particular, might serve as a lovely capstone to a titanic career.
The problem comes when we apply that context – or perhaps, prejudice – to the handing out of awards like the Grammys. Then we simply have to forget who and simply hear the music.
I am assuming most of my favorite rock albums that have been released so far in the 2026 Grammy window (which dates back to the autumn of 2025) – albums like Known Associates, Bleeds, God Save the Gun – will be considered in the alt categories.
But if a song like McCartney’s “Home to Us,” which has the added Grammy catnip of including Ringo Starr, deprives a song like the Paranoid Style’s “DFL” from a Best Rock Song nomination, that simply self-fulfills the prophecy of rock being dead, when in fact, it is not. If it keeps the Paradox’s “Do It Again” from a nomination, even worse.
I do not expect the Bobby Lees new album, New Self, to get nominated in the rock categories, even though I guarantee it will be better than virtually any other rock album this year. The Grammys have never known what to do with punk, and have only had slightly more facility with metal.
Geese will get multiple nominations. This is the Recording Academy’s nod toward youth culture. But there will be plenty of other songs and albums from younger artists that should get serious consideration.
The Stones and McCartney – and Foo Fighters and U2, for that matter – should get serious consideration as well. I just hope bias toward older, safer performers doesn’t unduly tip the scale. Because that ain’t the way rock and roll is supposed to work.
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