Tag Archives: esperanza spalding

Best “New” Artist

To all the people in the world who were disappointed by Arcade Fire winning the Grammy for Album Of The Year purely because they had never heard of Arcade Fire before:

At least the award for Best New Artist has some loose criteria. Apparently the nominees have to have been heard of by a fair amount of people. For example, the winner of that Grammy, Esperanza Spalding, is hardly a new artist. She has released three albums under her own name, the first of which came out in 2006. That’s 5 years ago! A nominee, Drake, has released music as early as 2006. Florence & The Machine released singles in 2008. (Granted, it was in the UK, so how can we be expected to know about that?) Mumford & Sons toured the UK in early 2008.

Some are relatively new. But ask their fans and you might get a different answer.