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The GRAMMYs will hand out 95 awards this year, though only a small fraction will be televised. Most of the awards handed out ahead of the broadcast are relatively niche, like Best Classical Music Solo, Best Score for a Video Game or Other Interactive Media, or Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album. It mostly makes sense: the average American isn’t too concerned with non-mainstream genres like opera and gospel, nor do they particularly care about the technical prowess behind writing their favorite song or putting together the year’s best album package. But there’s one non-televised category that sticks out: Best Music Video.
Considering the GRAMMYs love of visual spectacle, it’s a little surprising this category has never been broadcast. At first glance, it may seem like a more technical category than the typical fare. Coupled with a nomination process that sees GRAMMY votes filtered and centralized through an appointed Craft Committee, it would be easy for Best Music Video to tilt into obscurity, more focused on internal politics than reflecting the world at large. But across the decades, the category feels unexpectedly populist, if still occasionally prone to the same foibles as the GRAMMYs at large (like “Hey Ya” losing to Johnny Cash in 2004).
Around the mid-2010s, the category became less racially stratified, with wins for Pharrell, Kendrick Lamar, and Childish Gambino in quick succession. It’s also the only GRAMMY Beyonce won for “Formation” in 2017, suggesting that niche talent and mainstream appeal aren’t always at odds.
Still, there’s one thing about the Best Music Video category that genuinely makes no sense: the fact that the award is grouped under the field title of — take a deep breath before you say this out loud — Children's, Comedy, Audio Book Narration & Storytelling, Visual Media & Music Video/Film.
Why does it matter? In an effort to ensure GRAMMY voters are knowledgeable about the awards they weigh in on, the Academy limits the number of “fields” any individual can vote in. A field is a group of awards: everyone votes in the general field for the landmark awards everyone is familiar with, such as Album of the Year, Best New Artist, and the like. Then, they can vote in an additional ten categories split across no more than three “fields” or groups of awards. Some are intuitive and based on genre; others seem to cluster around knowledge bases, like the Production, Engineering, Composition & Arrangement field.
The Children's, Comedy, Audio Book Narration & Storytelling, Visual Media & Music Video/Film field fits neither of those archetypes. Fitting 9 categories under one field heading, it’s larger than the General field and the second largest after Global music, but these awards span an even more eclectic mix of mediums.
Lumping Best Music Video into the same category as Best Children’s Album doesn’t seem to have any meaningful rationale. Hazarding a guess, I’d say this field was initially intended to cover everything the average consumer primarily encounters on their television back in the day, and the field heading was intended to corral Hollywood insiders and diehards with the most relevant expertise. But more than 40 years from the award’s inception, the GRAMMYs ought to get with the times.
Back in the day, a music video was nice to have, but not essential for an artist. These days, it’s a prerequisite for reaching new audiences, even if only via TikTok snippets. The same way music videos have moved to new mediums, maybe it’s time for the Best Music Video Grammy to move to a new field.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying the GRAMMYs should immediately drop Best Music Video in the general field and let everyone vote together, but a possible solution could be to move Best Music Video into the Package, Notes, and Historical field — which includes Best Recording Package and Best Album Cover and only has four categories.
Folding Best Music Video into the Package field would consolidate the extra-musical aspects of album-making under a single grouping, minimizing the risk of qualified voters being unfairly blocked from making their opinions heard. And while most of the people opting in to vote for Best Music Video will have plenty of experience and knowhow, the shift would further boost the voting body’s expertise by inviting in more technical creatives who self-selected into voting on album packages. It might not change who goes home with the gramophone, but it would certainly make the award more meaningful.