Every year the Grammys are Lucy and we music fans are a collective Charlie Brown hoping to finally kick the football. They'll always let you down because their metric for who is deserving of an award is rooted in what is commercially successful, not what is musically innovative. From our view, they get it wrong every year! But sometimes they get it sort of right! So according to our righteous and critical perspective (lol), here are the best and worst songs nominated for Grammys this year.

Best

Deafheaven - “Honeycomb”

Best Metal Performance

For a while, the members of Deafheaven had a running joke about winning a Grammy: “Like, someone comes up with a good riff and it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s our Grammy winner,’” vocalist George Clarke told Pitchfork. Like a lot of things with this band, what might have once seemed absurd has now morphed into something strangely real. Maybe next they can joke about playing the Super Bowl. –Sam Sodomsky

Listen: Deafheaven, “Honeycomb”

Drake - “Nice for What”

Best Rap Performance

You know how American Sniper became the highest grossing film of 2014 despite its use of an almost satirically fake-looking prop baby? That’s kind of how Drake’s Scorpion feels in retrospect. But for Drake (and Clint Eastwood), sometimes you are so in touch with a segment of the population that literally nothing can bring you down. Released before You Are Hiding a Child-gate and sounding just as untouchable now, “Nice for What” is the triumphant sound of believing this truth to be self-evident. –S.S.

Listen: Drake, “Nice for What”

Sufjan Stevens - “Mystery of Love”

Best Song Written for Visual Media

It’s good to see that Grammy voters are also still laying alone at night, weeping, as they imagine Call Me By Your Name hunks Elio and Oliver running through the Alps as Sufjan whisper-croons. In a category that tends to reward razzmatazz musicals and saccharine animated films, it’s a relief to see Sufjan Stevens’ humble, gorgeous falsetto recognized. –Quinn Moreland

Listen: Sufjan Stevens, “Mystery of Love”

Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper - “Shallow”

Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Pop Group Performance, Best Song Written for Visual Media

As sure as Jackson Maine will always want to take another look at you, “Shallow” was bound to be nominated for a Grammy. (It’s actually nominated for four, which is one more than Ally was nominated for in the film. Take that, cinema.) It’s got it all: a girl living in the modern word, a boy keeping it so hardcore, a vague existential crisis with a sick riff. What will happen if it doesn’t win anything? The darkest “Oh, HOOOOH Oh HOAAHHOOAHHOAAAH” imaginable. –Q.M.

Listen: Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper, “Shallow”

Travis Scott - “Sicko Mode” [ft. Drake]

Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song

As you read this, there is a 16 year old from Iowa creating a shoot-dancing Triller video to “Sicko Mode.” I don’t blame them, it’s an irresistible song that features Drake taking a nap thanks to a small dose of Xanax, Travis Scott inventing the beat switch (I’m kidding, he didn’t), and every producer ever on a single track, even your cousin who keeps DMing you a link to his lo-fi Bandcamp beat tape. That’s more than enough for a Grammy. –Alphonse Pierre

Listen: Travis Scott, “Sicko Mode”

St. Vincent: “Masseduction”

Best Rock Song

Very cool of all the baby boomers in the Recording Academy to nominate the title track off St. Vincent’s 2017 record—which is absolutely about dominatrix culture and queer subjectivity. The hook goes, “I can’t turn off what turns me on,” and there are two different references about how going to church is hot. This is in the running against weird, soulless ghoul acts that write equally ghoulish music. Here’s hoping Annie Clark goes full camp and revives the toilet costume for her Grammy performance, in effect confusing all the normies. –Sophie Kemp