The Grammy Awards were held Sunday night, the music industry’s biggest night of the year. It is well to exam this accurate cultural barometer. The crucial question of interest, which will become apparent as you read, is this: can we recover?

Best rap song was Alright by one Kendrick Lamar, the most feted musician of the night (he won multiple awards). The lyrics of that music? An edited, expurgated sample:

Alls my life I has to fight, nigg*

Alls my life I

Hard times like God

Bad trips like: “God!”

Nazareth, I’m f——d up

Homie you f——d up

But if God got us we then gon’ be alright Nigg*, we gon’ be alright

Nigg*, we gon’ be alright… Behind my side we lookin’ at you from the face down

What mac-11 even boom with the bass down

Schemin’! And let me tell you bout my life

Painkillers only put me in the twilight

What pretty p—y and Benjamin is the highlight…

That same gentleman won best rap album of the year with To Pimp a Butterfly, which inter alia contains the song The Blacker the Berry, which angrily informs the listener:

I’m African-American, I’m African

I’m black as the moon, heritage of a small village

Pardon my residence

Came from the bottom of mankind

My hair is nappy, my d*** is big, my nose is round and wide

You hate me don’t you?

You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture

You’re f——‘ evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey

You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me

And this is more than confession

I mean I might press the button just so you know my discretion

I’m guardin’ my feelins, I know that you feel it

You sabotage my community, makin’ a killin’

You made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigg*

Given the wide scale success of black musicians such as Lamar, including the enormous successes that man and others like him have garnered, plus the near-ubiquitous presence of his weepingly awful music, the plan to “terminate” his “culture” isn’t going well.

Best album Uptown Funk, by somebody called Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. Excerpt of lyrics from the title song (the song is repetitive so this sample is not as small as it seems).

I’m too hot (hot damn)

Called a police and a fireman

I’m too hot (hot damn)

Make a dragon wanna retire man… Come on, dance

Jump on it

If you sexy than flaunt it

If you freaky than own it

Don’t brag about it, come show me

Come on, dance

Jump on it

If you sexy than flaunt it

Well it’s Saturday night and we in the spot

Don’t believe me just watch…

The song of the year was Thinking Out Loud by an Ed Sheeran, a song fashioned more along classical pop lines, with only a touch of innuendo, a splash of narcissism:

When my hair’s all but gone and my memory fades

And the crowds don’t remember my name

When my hands don’t play the strings the same way (mmm…)

I know you will still love me the same…

Rock and roll was not missing. The best rock song was from a group called Alabama Shakes, with Don’t Wanna Fight. The song’s lyrics, but at least they were easy to memorize:

I don’t wanna fight no more [x6] No, no, no, no! I don’t wanna fight no more [x7]

I don’t wanna fight, I don’t wanna fight!

I don’t wanna fight no more [x8]

Reminiscent of the subtlety of the Beatles’ I Wanna Hold Your Hand, no?

The language used in these, and in many other well received songs, is, though it is difficult to tell, a corrupted form of English. I have studied this argot and have discovered the best way to learn it is the same way to learn to play popular music: stop the lessons early.

It’s true, you will say, and as your grandparents as their grandparents before them said, that vulgar music has always been with us. The difference is that now the triumph of the vulgar is complete. Go almost anywhere and low music with cant lyrics will be heard: it cannot be escaped. Even the Grammy’s best “classical” instrumental solo was won for an ugly, atonal song (here is a version, by another player and not by the winner, whom I could not find). Beauty is absent. Worse, and the reason the answer to the question which I asked at the beginning is No, is that those who know better refuse to speak out, fearful of being called elitist or—the worst calumny possible—“racist”. Cowardice explains much.

Perhaps the rot is only in the lyrics. Perhaps the music itself has redeeming qualities? There, dear reader, you will have to excuse me. I entered into YouTube the best dance/electronic album, which was from Skrillex and Diplo, Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack U, the lead song of which was Don’t Do Drugs Just Take Some Jack U. Unfortunately, I was able to listen to it.

My doctor advises me that the effects should be temporary and can be cured by steady application of the balm of beautiful music. I chose Boccherini’s La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid, which for your ease and edification I linked at the top of this post. I chose this version because a snippet of the piece was included in the disappointing movie Master and Commander, a movie based on the greatest novel (in twenty volumes) in the English language by Patrick O’Brian.

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