The Grammy Awards can be great. But let's not mistake entertainment for art. Many times the Recording Academy - the ones who vote on who is nominated and who wins Grammys - is simply behind any creative art form.
The albums that follow were all ahead of their time and underappreciated by the Grammys. The great thing is that we listeners can still appreciate them now whether they won an award or not. Ultimately, music is not made to win awards but simply to be loved by those who choose to love the work.
Two of the excellent albums that follow were not even nominated for Grammy Awards. The other two lost out to lesser works. But fans of the music that follows should not care because they know greatness when they hear it.
Four albums that deserved more Grammy Awards love
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)
This was not a Beach Boys album but instead a Brian Wilson album that Wilson was nice enough to enough to slap the band's name on and ask the rest of the group to just add some vocals. The entire album was written, produced, and conceived of by Wilson after he was inspired to create such a record after listening to the Beatles' Rubber Soul. Wilson wanted to make an orchestral rock album with elements of a barbershop quartet and Wilson made something unlike anything before or since.
Beach Boy Mike Love gave Wilson a lot of pushback for Wilson's concept. The Beach Boys had made a lot of money off of singing songs about teenage love that were safe and summery. Wilson still used that slight concept but fleshed it out and included animal sounds and borrowed from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."
There is no way to listen to a track such as "God Only Knows" and how its melody is deconstructed in the last minute and not get an idea of what Wagner's theory on music was. Only Wilson did it all in 2 minutes and 56 seconds of pure perfection. The Beach Boys might have been a safe band for parents, but there was a lot going on below the surface. And yet, the Recording Academy was not wise enough to include this album among its Best Album nominees in 1967.
Radiohead - OK Computer (release year 1997)
Radiohead's record was so great that even though the Grammys are not a big fan of great rock, there seemed to be no way to keep this album from being nominated in 1998. Radiohead had gone into the studio with songs that would have been excellent if they were just played acoustically but the band made the tracks into something very different than everything else. A song like "Paranoid Android" was kin to Pink Floyd, but more like Pink Floyd's younger brother who had a mean streak.
The album is at times airy, at times straight-forward rock, at times completely electronic, but always incredible. Nearly 30 years later, the record still feels fresh and new and pushing boundaries. It took a brave band with immense talent to create such a piece of art and that is exactly what Radiohead was. They were (and still are) like Rush but with a much better imagination.
The other nominees in 1998 included Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind (which won because people think it's cool to honor Dylan for everything he does whether the work merits that or not), Babyface's The Day, Paul McCartney's Flaming Pie, and Paula Cole's This Fire. All these years later, many still listen to the Radiohead album or are interested in hearing it for the first time while the other albums have diminished. Except for Cole because no one even knows who she is.
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (release year 1972)
There was simply no way this record was going to get nominated in the early 1970s. David Bowie was simply too weird and the topics he sang about were too odd - singing about aliens? What?!. The artist and the album simply did not fit safely into any kind of genre, and in fact, Bowie's Ziggy Stardust simply seemed too dangerous and androgynous for Grammy Award voters to feel comfortable with.
Plus, what would have happened had Bowie been nominated? He might have shown up to the awards like Ziggy and kids would be watching at home. The Academy could not have that. What would the good people of America think of them? Of course, that was the entire point of Ziggy Stardust, and the Academy snubbing the album only proved its point.
The albums that were nominated for the 1973 Grammys were the antithesis of Ziggy Stardust. They included George Harrison's The Concert for Bangladesh (which won), Don McLean's American Pie, the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, Neil Diamond's Moods, and Nilsson's Nilsson Schmilsson. If all those albums and Ziggy Stardust had been in school together and accidentally met in the bathroom, Ziggy would likely ask for a cigarette and all the rest would have rushed out of the room, except for American Pie which might just stare at Ziggy.
David Bowie's album made kids who felt like they were different secretly be OK with being different. Bowie never stopped pushing the boundaries of what music could sound like. He did so often before the world would understand what he was doing. That is exactly what happened with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
Prince - Purple Rain (release year 1984)
Like Radiohead's album, at least Purple Rain got nominated. The album that won in 1985 (because, again, the Grammys are weird about the timeframe from which albums are nominated) was Can't Slow Down by Lionel Richie. This made sense in Grammy minds as Richie appeared to be such a safer choice than the more rebellious Prince. Of course, as things turned out, Prince was pretty much a saint to whoever got to know him and Richie had some embarrassing - and very public - marital problems.
Of course, that last bit should have nothing to do with anyone weighing the merit of albums, but the Grammys, like the Oscars, are very much about appearance as much as truly taking a look at the quality of the work. There is nothing wrong with Richie's album, I guess, but groundbreaking it was not. 40 years later, very few people are listening to what Richie did while Prince is still an important figure in music, nearly a decade after his death.
Purple Rain, of course, also served as the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. While the album names Prince and the Revolution, we know the real truth. Prince wrote all the songs and likely played every instrument you hear on the record and recorded and produced the album as well. Purple Rain was a work of a musical genius just coming into his own.
Any album that begins with a track like "Let's Go Crazy" and ends with "Purple Rain" is almost definitely going to be one of the best pieces of music you will ever hear. Prince also used electronics in a different way than most records at the time, but he molded them in a way to augment the organic creation of the track. Every single track is a winner. This album remains a must-listen even today.