Obama ’12 should hire Grammy nominee Linda Chorney

Maybe you’ve heard of this already: when the Grammy nominations were announced in December, competitors for the Americana album of the year Grammy featured usual suspects including Levon Helm, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Ry Cooder – and then there was Linda Chorney.

This piece explains the Linda story pretty well, but in summary, Chorney, an obscure singer/songwriter, campaigned for her album nomination by networking on Grammy365.com, a website for members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which presents the Grammys. It’s classic grassroots politics. Her efforts paid off, big time. And a lot of people are pissed. This post, on NoDepression.com, is a rather overheated denunciation of Chorney’s nomination, although I’d have to agree that I’d love to see Hayes Carll up there instead.

I find this all fascinating. And here’s what I think, for what it’s worth: I’ve listened to most of her nominated album, “Emotional Jukebox.” It isn’t very good, in my opinion, and it is definitely not Americana, though that’s a hard word to define. At best, her songs remind me of mid-70s Loggins and Messina. At worst, I get some Shania Twain. I suspect there are a lot more than ten albums that are better than this one.

But on the other hand, I applaud her effort. I wouldn’t even call it “gaming the system.” She discovered a way to connect with lots of Grammy voters, and she went for it. If they chose to vote for, pardon the expression, shit, that’s not her fault. Look at some of the nominees in the major categories: I mean, Katy Perry’s “Firework” for Record of the Year? Really??

 
So…tell me your take.