Last night’s Grammy Awards got the Song and Record of the Year right — Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” won both — but no Grammy Awards ceremony would be complete without some shocking snubs and undeserved victories.
No victory was more controversial than Best Rock Album winner Greta Van Fleet, a young Michigan quartet featuring three brothers and an ability to sound almost exactly like a cover band doing recently discovered Led Zeppelin tunes. For example, here’s their breakthrough from last year, “Highway Song.”
For this act of musical sacrilege, Pitchfork gave the album that just won the Grammy, “Anthem of the Peaceful Army,” 1.6 on a scale of 10 and a review so savage it became an instant internet classic.
So yeah, the singer sounds a whole lot like Robert Plant, but that’s sure not Jimmy Page and John Bonham behind him. Yet it’s not the band’s pedestrian chops that have drawn so much wrath. Critics have rather taken offense at the very idea that a bunch of kids playing derivative music so quickly became popular, as if it’s the band’s fault that a major-label A&R guy offered them a contract and found an audience for their music.
From a less aggrieved standpoint, the main problem seems mostly due to the band’s lack of experience. Last month it appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and got swallowed up by the sparse stage, leading to more vicious reviews from critics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B0QHAwtvbE
For these sins, Greta Van Fleet has earned a dubious honor from writers for mainstream outlets, who have dubbed them the new Nickelback.