Best New Artist of the Year, according to the Grammys, is Esperanza Spalding, a 26-year-old jazz bassist and singer whose most recent album is titled Chamber Music Society. What!? or should the question be, How?! Full congrats, she’s as bright a rising star as has emerged from jazz by virtue of her charm and chops since 2006 — when Junjo, her first CD, was released. She beat out some kid named Justin Bieber, whose fans are enraged.
I have no insight into how this happened, although perhaps Bieber, the odds-on favorite, was done in by touch competition from Drake (rapper-crooner), Florence and the Machine (British pop/rock singer whose recordings are described as “musically mature and emotionally mesmerizing by AllMusic.com, which I won’t link to because it won’t let you come back to me) and Mumford & Sons (alt.rockers with country roots), none of whom I’ve heard of. Which shows how out of it I am.