After years of the dance community spewing heated opinions about how the Grammys' dance/electronic fields have done justice to the nominees — and sometimes the winners — the realm has been singularly quiet since the ceremony closed on Sunday.
This general calm (minus a few predictable naysayers) suggests a mutual agreement that the 2024 Grammys have finally, more or less, nailed dance/electronic music.
This success is largely due to the award for Best Pop Dance Recording, which was recently introduced in 2024 to honor dance music that intersects with pop, while also freeing up space in the dance/electronic category for more traditional thump-thump, womp -womp, dancing with boots and cats/electronic music. (Albeit more traditional dance/electronic music that is still, most of the time, very popular commercially.)
You couldn't find two more apt figures for these factions than Kylie Minogue and Skrillex, with the former winning a pop dance Grammy for her culture-infiltrating 'Padam Padam' and the latter winning for his much-loved “Rumble” bass. ', a collaboration with UK grime MC Flowdan and Fred again.., both of whom also received awards for the win.
It's, of course, hard to say what this year's field of nominees would have looked like if dance pop hadn't been introduced, but it almost certainly wouldn't have fully represented both sonic ends of the dance/electronic world. (Racial representation and gender is a different matter: Flowdan was the only nominee of color in the fields, and Romy was the only female producer, epitomizing the dance category's persistent problem with the nomination of mostly straight, white men. This issue was particularly acid in 2024 , given that the four major categories were dominated by women, including three queer women winners.)
Without the added space afforded to dance with the new category, it's possible that the most left-field candidate in the dance/electronic recording category, Aphex Twin's “Blackbox Life Record 21F,” wouldn't have made the cut. Or maybe only one David Guetta song instead of two would be nominated.
It's also possible that 'Padam Padam' would have beaten 'Rumble', whose win is particularly significant given the spotlight it puts on grime, a sonic and cultural phenomenon in the UK but not yet a commercial force in the US. to respect a little more [grime] name', Flowdan he said Cracked Magazine after his win, “because in some areas I feel like the music or the genre or the culture is being downplayed as if it's not something that's really influential.”
What is almost certain, however, is that, as in so many years, without dance pop, the field of nominees would probably have ended up being somewhat odd, with dance-oriented pop stars like Minogue potentially up against a avant-garde electronic artist like Aphex Twin. This theme was on display last year, when Beyoncé faced off against Bonobo, Kaytranada, Diplo, Rufus du Sol and ODESZA when her “Break My Soul” was nominated for (and won) Best Dance/Electronic Recording.
In the category's early years, the field of nominees typically included artists such as Minogue (who won the award in 2004), as well as fellow pop stars Madonna, Cher, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. He started rewarding electronic producers like The Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk more frequently in the late 00s. A few years later, the category was taken over by a new strain of dance pop, EDM, for a time when mainstage bangers from artists like The Chainsmokers competed with more underground acts like Riton – exacerbating the problem that eventually resulted in the addition of new category.
The competition between such different artists may have been technically fair, but it never made sense. But this year, the dance pop category did away with the strange bedfellow phenomenon that has plagued the dance/electronic recording category since it was introduced to the awards in 1998.
The dance pop category not only created an official space for producers like Guetta, whose work generally intersects heavily with pop, but by awarding Minogue in particular, it managed to give back to an artist like her – whose work is so often inspired by and at home in the club world — the dance floor where it rightfully belongs. Minogue is as danceable as Skrillex, and this year, they finally didn't have to fight for space or recognition.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/2024-grammys-pop-dance-electronic-awards-skrillex-kylie-minogue-1235600487/