Now. Then. Later.

I stopped paying attention to the Grammys when it became apparent that the musical crimes of white males - prog, metal, Pat Boone, Michael Bolton, yacht rock, etc., etc., etc. - finally caught up with any musician with pale skin and a Y chromosome, leading to my fellow honkies being shut out of the big Grammy awards . . . Record of the Year, Album of the Year, whatever.  And this year, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar dominated the big awards.  (Who won Record of the Year and Album of the Year, you ask?  Ahh, I don't give a twit.)  But the Best Rock Performance Grammy winner of 2025 definitely raised my eyebrows.

It went to the Beatles for their last single, "Now and Then," from 2023.

This made quite an impression on me.  Hey, why fib?  "Now and Then" is a pretty nice song, even if it's more of a ballad, a song that has more in common with a Neil Diamond MOR tune than with a Neil Young rocker.  And Paul McCartney's use of artificial intelligence to finish a song that was culled from John Lennon's vast accumulation of demos of songs in various states of completion (an accumulation that, thanks to AI, might one day produce a few new John Lennon solo albums), which was slated for the Beatles' 1996 Anthology 3 compilation but shelved because George Harrison had a problem with how it sounded at the time, was certainly a worthy innovation.  But let's be honest.  The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences actually selected a Beatles song that was recorded and mixed piecemeal over a 45-year time frame over more contemporary rock performances from current artistes who are struggling to be heard as rock and rollers in a hip-hop/R&B world.  And, like the last John Lennon album released in his lifetime - his and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy, the 1982 Album of the Year Grammy recipient - "Now and Then" is a good record that nonetheless would not have won a Grammy on its own merit if the insect (as Bernie Taupin called him) who murdered Lennon had been fatally run over by a speeding taxi on Central Park West in Manhattan on the afternoon of December 8, 1980, before he had the chance to commit his evil deed.  In fact, had Lennon lived, "Now and Then" likely would never have become a Beatles song.

Or, in other words, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences would rather celebrate rock's past than even acknowledge rock's present.

It's bad enough that today's rock bands should consider themselves lucky if they can acquire a recording contract.  Now they can't even win an award if a band that broke up more than half century before is their competition.  Or Beyoncé, who won a Rock Performance Grammy awhile back and just won the Best Country Album Grammy, so desirous is she to be represented in every musical form except classical music.  (Maybe Ringo Starr's recently released country album will win next year.)   Such hapless bands would include TV On The Radio or the Alabama Shakes, both black rock bands, as much as Dirty Honey or Greta Van Fleet, so the turn away from rock is not completely racial.  It's mostly aesthetic.  Guitar music just isn't as cool as it used to be, if indeed it is still cool at all, though part of the reason for that is that it's associated with honkies.  And quite frankly, that's the fault of white male rock fans and radio programmers who wouldn't accept black rock artistes as rockers back in the seventies.  

And so, as long as electric-guitar groups are perceived to be on the way out - a phenomenon Decca Records' Dick Rowe predicted in 1962 when he rejected the Beatles for a recording contract, making him far ahead of his time - the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences will continue to stress rock and roll's history because rock and roll is history.

As I write this, Beatles fans on social media are celebrating today's anniversary (the 61st) of the fabulous foursome's first performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show."  That's because there's nothing current in rock to celebrate.  It's not about now . . . it's about then.