poll Is it time to merge ROTY/SOTY at the GRAMMYs?

[Wonderland]

Since 2000, 12/23 songs have gone on to win both SOTY and ROTY in the same night at the GRAMMY awards:

 

2000s: 5/10 songs won both

2010s: 5/10 songs won both

2020s: 2/3 songs have won both so far

 

SOTY is designed to award the songwriter of a nominated piece of work, while ROTY is designed to award to the performers, producers, engineers and mixers.

 

Given the significant level of redundancy of the winners of these two catergoes (the same song has won both over 50% of the time in the last 20 years) AND considering the significant overlap between the actual nominees for both awards nowadays (as most performers/producers take a songwriting credits), is it perhaps time we consider merging these two categories into one GRAMMY award and cut down on the doubling up that is now occuring over half the time?

 

For those still on the fence I pose the following question(s):

- Do you agree with the GRAMMYs that the best produced/engineered/performed record will also be found to be the best written song over 50% of the time?

- Is it fair that a song from an artist could hypothetically win up to 4 GRAMMYs (If nominated in a non-pop genre category it could potentially win the "song" and "performance" categories on top of ROTY/SOTY) in a night when the most an album can win is half that?

 

I will now open the floor for discussion and warmly welcome any opinions/thoughts

 

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Wonderland

[byzantium]

Yes.  Obviously the academy cannot tell them apart so they should just stop pretending they treat them differently.  

 

[OnlyManInTheWorld]

Yes

[Letemtalk]

Yes, what we really, really need is fewer award presentations and more performances, in many cases, performances from people not nominated, but they seem to be Grammy favourites or have connections with the Grammy organisers.

 

The average Grammy voter in first round voting is dealing with a list of over 1000 submitted songs/records for each award and there is no way that they listen to even a fraction of the songs, they just scroll down the list looking for a familiar name or song that they like.

 

One advantage of having the two categories, is that it allows for different nominations, because the SOTY nominations sheet is listed in order of the song name, while the ROTY sheet is listed in order of the artist, which appears to help some artists depending on alphabetical order e.g. Abba, Batiste, Bennett, Bieber, Carlile, Doja Cat and Eilish who were nominated for ROTY at the 2022 awards.

 

I'm voting no because they don't show enough award presentations and do show too many lip synced and boring performances and will just use it as an excuse to show even less award presentations and more boring performances.

 

Also in many cases where there was a split in SOTY/ROTY, one of the winning songs was from the AOTY winning album, so we would end up with more sweeps of the top awards - not counting BNA as a top award as very few artists are eligible.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Letemtalk

[Kiss It Better]

no, if anything they should add more categories like Best Pop Song, Best Genre-Bending Album, or something

[Cryptique]

I think they need to have a separate committee for ROTY and SOTY Nominations after the shortlist.. ROTY (producers) and SOTY (writers).. 

[JorgeM]

They should educated voters about the purpose of each award and maybe just let songwritter to vote song of the year 

[Jude]

Yes, there's too many Grammys already. Also, it's time to eradicate some awards.

[sourtwink]

no, they just need to differentiate them more and make it very clear to voters that record is about production and song is about songwriting. they just vote for which song they personally like best regardless of songwriting or production i fear 

[lover.]

51 minutes ago, Wonderland said:

SOTY is designed to award the songwriter of a nominated piece of work, while ROTY is designed to award to the performers, producers, engineers and mixers.

 

I feel like because of this they will never merge the two categories. 

[favorite crime]

Yes, people ALWAYS just vote their favorite song in the category. The only time there's been "splits" in the past 25 years was when one of the winners wasn't nominated in the other category

[Azulito]

Yes, it’s pointless nowadays. They need to get rid of a bunch of other categories too

[fridayteenage]

1 hour ago, Jude said:

Yes, there's too many Grammys already. Also, it's time to eradicate some awards.

new artist is the one that should go, when they constantly scramble by finding people who are far from new to fill it out.

 

i think for roty/soty, it was okay, but now that there are 20 nominees total between the two, i would consider it.

[chiliam]

SOTY should be voted by writter with at least 50 registered songs only.

The winner for Soty is so tragic and not given to the best writter melody and lyric.

 

[Wonderland]

8 hours ago, lover. said:

I feel like because of this they will never merge the two categories. 

They’d have one GRAMMY that awards all the contributors. Doesn’t seem that hard to pull off 

[Wonderland]

9 hours ago, sourtwink said:

no, they just need to differentiate them more and make it very clear to voters that record is about production and song is about songwriting. they just vote for which song they personally like best regardless of songwriting or production i fear 

I feel like there’s some story about them trying to do this every year but it flops  

[TheFameCurse]

It is time to cancel the Grammys. Enough of rich people getting awards that nobody cares.

[drivers license]

7 hours ago, chiliam said:

SOTY should be voted by writter with at least 50 registered songs only.

The winner for Soty is so tragic and not given to the best writter melody and lyric.

 

 

OT: the recent winners of SOTY have been "ROTY" material, so it's like, what's the point anymore  just merge them now  

[Katamari]

9 hours ago, JorgeM said:

They should educated voters about the purpose of each award and maybe just let songwritter to vote song of the year 

 

9 hours ago, Cryptique said:

I think they need to have a separate committee for ROTY and SOTY Nominations after the shortlist.. ROTY (producers) and SOTY (writers).. 

agreed

 

[Cruel Summer]

I agree with proposals to separate the committees that choose nominations and winners for these two categories. They’re distinct enough in intent to justify both existing.

 

However - AOTY should be treated as the most important award, not ROTY as is often treated like the flagship award of the ceremony. The Academy needs to revisit its stance on that.

[Wonderland]

9 hours ago, chiliam said:

SOTY should be voted by writter with at least 50 registered songs only.

The winner for Soty is so tragic and not given to the best writter melody and lyric.

 

But nowadays with everyone claiming song credits I don’t think that group would be very exclusive.

 

Most artists/producers probably have 50 songwriting credits to their name, for example. And they probably outnumber the type of Songwriters you’re looking for to vote.

 

[Letemtalk]

20 hours ago, chiliam said:

SOTY should be voted by writter with at least 50 registered songs only.

The winner for Soty is so tragic and not given to the best writter melody and lyric.

10 hours ago, Wonderland said:

But nowadays with everyone claiming song credits I don’t think that group would be very exclusive.

I think the idea is on the right track, but there are plenty of people with 50 features that would have received a credit for each 15 second feature and easily qualify, while singer songwriters with 3-4 albums wouldn't qualify to vote for the song-writing award. That seems wrong to me.

 

Since producers almost always demand a writing credit these days, the voters for the song-writing awards would be mostly producers who already get to vote for Producer of the Year.

 

Perhaps there needs to be a different qualifying criteria.

I have a modest proposal, only allow the existing SOTY winners to vote.   

 

[GraceRandolph]

Maybe renaming them to clarify would be better? 

[Feanor]

Yes, they should be merged.

 

Or maybe rename SOTY into Best Written Song or a variation of that.

And there's already precedence for that with the Bets Song Written for Visual Media category, which is also a songwriting category like SOTY:

 

[simmnfierzig]

Merge it and pick 3 winners every year. There are so many stupid categories with very little competition and really too few overall and pop grammys. 

Songs of the year and 3 winners, because that field is just always extremely crowded