By Gregory AdamsLegions of angry Grammy viewers flooded their Twitter accounts over Bon Iver's wins at the awards show last night (February 12), though their ire came not just because he beat out nominees like Skrillex and Nicki Minaj in the Best New Artist category, but because they have no clue who the indie rocker is.
Much like last year's confounding Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? blog, the similarly-minded Who Is Bon Iver? collects a good chunk of confused tweets maligning the supposed unknown for stealing the statuette (though the site has been up for a couple of months). Many misheard the project's moniker, referring to the act as "Bonny Bear."
In the tweets, main man Justin Vernon gets shat on for his thinning hairline, having a beard and not being Nicki Minaj, among other things. Some even argued that Minaj should have won the award because of marketing savvy.
"What the fuck? Who the fuck is bon iver? Hello bitches nicki minaj should have won, she has her own nail polish line. And lipstick by mac," a disgruntled Minaj fan wrote.
Vernon's speech left some unimpressed as well, finding his toast to those who didn't win as condescending.
"I want to say thank you to all of the nominees, to all of the non-nominees that have never been here and never will be here, all the bands I toured with, all of the bands that inspired me," Vernon said during his acceptance speech.
You can see the collection of confused tweets here.
Bon Iver wasn't the only cause of confusion last night. Paul McCartney also turned a few heads over his performance, if only because the young'uns had no clue the music icon existed. A melee of perplexing posts have been presented over at Buzzfeed with the common critique seemingly being that Macca is just too old to relate to the kids of today.
As one kid eloquently put it, "Who the hell is Paul McCartney #OldFart." A troubling sign of generations to come.
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-13 13:12:11As one kid eloquently put it, "Who the hell is Paul McCartney #OldFart." A troubling sign of generations to come.
Don't blame them for making this comment-why should everybody have to know or care about the Beatles (young people of color especially)? The overloading of classic rot into everybody's mind has got to stop, and at least these kids are immune to it's pernicious influence enough to not care about Paul McCartney. Not that the Beatles shouldn't be celebrated-far from it. But the celebration of the Beatles has become too much even for me, a die-hard fan, and as I said above, it has to stop; radio should be playing new music, not constantly playing old music over and over again.
I am glad to see Bon Iver win this year, even though most of the kids haven't heard of them like they never heard of Arcade Fire.
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-13 20:07:34Poseur #1, YMMV, but to me the main problem with the "who the hell is Paul McCartney" meme isn't the fact that the kids aren't familiar with him (which is kinda sad, but understandable at the same time.) Rather, it's the much more troubling implication, that specifically *because* he's an #OldFart whom the kids haven't heard of, it means he's supposed to shut up and get off the stage and not get lifetime achievement awards or whatever.
Some kids seem to think that any music they haven't heard of is automatically of less value than the latest pop princess du jour. Where it used to be "if I haven't heard of you, then I should check you out and see if I might like your work", now it's become "if I haven't heard of you, then it means you suck donkey balls". And that's an awful place for the culture to be in *regardless* of whether you personally care about Paul McCartney or Bon Iver or Esperanza Spalding.
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-13 20:25:18Aaaargh, hit enter a bit too quickly. The last thing I wanted to say is, it's not the mere fact that the kids aren't all up to scratch on their classic rock history that bothers me (hell, I'm 40 years old and there's certainly music out there that I probably should know a lot more about than I do.)
Rather, it's the smug, self-righteous idea that if you haven't heard of someone then you're somehow entitled to dismiss them as being irrelevant and undeserving, or to belittle their age or their hairline, or to generally act like your lack of familiarity with their work says more about their entire worth as an artist and a human being than it does about what you are or aren't familiar with.
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-13 20:26:06"why should young people of color especially" not care or know about Macca?
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-13 22:57:52If Bon Iver won the Best New Artist award, and Macca won Lifetime Achievement, does it matter if some vocal tweeters don't know or care about them? Enough people obviously do for them to be recognized, and Bon Iver received top record honors for 2011 from nearly every notable music publication out there.
I'm also agree somewhat with the last poster in that not everyone should be expected to care about either of these two artists. While I do really enjoy Bon Iver, I can't say I have ever been able to get into more than maybe one album and a couple of other random songs from the Beatles' entire catalogue, and you can forget about Macca's work with Wings. I do love me some Donny Hathaway and Stevie, however...
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-14 00:12:59The world is clearly coming to an end. Burn your worldly possessions!
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-14 10:01:25This all assumes that blogs, tweets, facebook posts, and messageboards should be held to any degree of journalistic accountability, integrity, or objectivity. If you are seeking or validating the opinions of morons by following them on twitter or facebook or blogs or whatever, don't be disappointed when they disappoint you. Who cares......
Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-14 13:22:50Who is Nicky Minaj?? Seriously never heard of her.
Posted by name On 2012-02-14 18:48:24Eventually young tweeters will learn that the latest pop hit doesn't necessarily mean good music. The hidden indie gems like BonIver and apparently Arcade Fire are on another level of awesome.
Posted by Neville Ross On 2012-02-14 20:51:04Eventually young tweeters will learn that the latest pop hit doesn't necessarily mean good music.
What I've been seeing here on the 'Net the past two days is nothing but thinly veiled age (and race, because half of the Tweeters are black or of color) hatred due to these two deliberate quotings of Tweets. So far, it hasn't descended to the use of the N-word, but it could very well have done so. What I'd like to know is, why were they even requoted in the first place, other than to stir up shit for no reason and display schadenfreude at a folk-rock artist winning a Grammy? And why the frack couldn't have the people responding back to the Tweets just been graciously adult about the whole affair, and let it be?
Feb 13 2012
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Posted by Nameless Poseur On 2012-02-13 13:12:11As one kid eloquently put it, "Who the hell is Paul McCartney #OldFart." A troubling sign of generations to come.
