When the Grammy award nominations were announced yesterday, one thing that threw us off were the nominees for Best Rock Performance.
The category had Disturbed's "Sound of Silence" as well as Beyonce featuring Jack White performing “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” Beyonce and Disturbed in the same category?! Billboard spoke to Disturbed frontman David Draiman about the interesting turn of events and Draiman seemed just as shocked:
"I have mad respect for all the artists in this category, including and especially Jack White,” Draiman says. "Is it strange [to be up against Beyonce]? I think the reason you asked the question is because it is. It definitely stands out — like, one of these things is not like the other, you know? But what are you going to do?"
Ultimately, what bothers Draiman about the category is the broad definition of "rock."
"When did it all become ‘rock'? If you look at every other genre, there are so many categories and sub-categories. For rock, this is all we’ve got, so everything ends up being jammed into these four categories. Is it diverse? Absolutely. It’s too diverse! When you can have, with all due respect, a Beyonce and a Disturbed in the same category, something has gone wrong. Not taking anything away from her whatsoever, we’re just very different from each other.”
I think Draiman makes a fair point here. Perhaps there should be more distinctions here, although to be fair, the category is pretty wideranging in this specific instance. And ultimately, we all know David Bowie is going to probably win.
Update:: We had the chance to interview the SVP of Awards at the Recording Academy, who did his best to explain how Disturbed and Beyonce got nominated in the same category.
