Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 12/16/2011 at 4:55 PM News

The Popdust Files: Beef, feuds, grammy awards, trent reznor

OK, that analogy isn’t perfect. It’s imperfect in many ways:

1) Justin Vernon, also known as Bon Iver, also known as That Guy Atop Everyone’s Top ___ Albums Of The Year List, was reacting to the VMAs he saw, not to the idea of the VMAs or to MTV itself. (He did that earlier.) Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails and lately of the Academy Awards’ favorite music soundtracks (The Social Network, now The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is totally reacting to the Grammys in general.
2) Bon Iver, to our knowledge, has never been nominated for a VMA. (Tons of Grammys, though.) Nine Inch Nails hasn’t just been nominated for Grammys–they’ve won several! Just take the journalistic record for it, though; Reznor’s kept his Golden Globe and Oscar, but he said he neither knows nor cares where his Grammys are. He’s got a reason, as stated in a Hollywood Reporter interview with a couple quotes more regrettable than this (uh, Trent, might want to be a bit more tactful about how you say you match music to scenes), there’s this:

“Why don’t the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap — like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided. The movie side is interesting, challenging, different and rewarding in way that I hadn’t experienced through my music career.”

Indeed, Trent; you figured out that a contest that measures which act gets the most votes by insiders is, in fact, an insiders’ club popularity contest. Meanwhile, the Academy that votes on the Awards is totally different. Good job! You get a cookie. Now off with you until next year, when you end up hate-watching the awards show anyway.

[Spin]