RICK BEATO: The 2026 Grammys — Proof Music is Getting Worse.
As Beato notes in his conclusion, after comparing the 2025 songs nominated for Grammys with those nominated from 1983, “No one’s going to remember these songs that were written by three, four, seven, ten, eleven people, 40 years from now, like they remember ‘Beat It’, ‘Billie Jean’, ‘Every Breath You Take’, ‘All Night Long’, ‘Maniac.’ Those songs are still getting streamed now. They already sold millions and millions of records 42 years ago, and they’re still getting played by people. And it’s new people that are listening to them. No one will remember these songs from today three years from now. They won’t.”
Besides the generic DAW-based production and all of the Mixmaster-blended writing, several of the songs are pastiches of earlier songs, much like the dopey clone of a clone of a clone of Michael Keaton in Multiplicity:
I learned about the concept of ‘pastiche’ in Frederic Jameson’s “Post-Modernism & Consumer Society.”
Once you become aware of it, you’ll notice it everywhere, including in half of the songs nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammys as @rickbeato revealed in his latest… pic.twitter.com/7I0DyxNn6i
— The War on Beauty (@thewaronbeauty) January 5, 2026