Grammy history last night

[Flip]

This is the first time a song that was written specifically for a video game won a grammy, the theme for Civ 4.

http://www.neatorama.com/2011/02/14/baba-yetu/

[Don]

Seems like a completely arbitrary and pointless award. If they awarded that to Eyes on Me does that change anything?

[Kupek]

I'm not sure if you understand the award. It was not an award for the best videogame song of the year. It was the award for "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists" which just so happens to have been originally composed for a videogame. The significance is that mainstream critics usually don't recognize the art in videogames as art.

[Don]

Err yeah I know what the award is for. How exactly is the video linked any different from say One Winged Angel or any of the hundreds of video game songs that featured some kind of choir and some kind of singing? Civ 4 has been out for a while so I assume it's not just something nobody has heard of that suddenly came out of nowhere. So yeah a bunch of guys changed their mind on what is art on a category that's almost entirely subjective. So? Maybe next year they'll decide to give it to a remix of One Winged Angel or whatever. How do you honestly say how good someone is singing or not in a language you don't can't even comprehend? It's like asking is Mozart better than Beethoven. You can't even have a remotely objective criteria to judge these things.

I'd be more impressed if a video game music hit top 10 selling on music as opposed to gaining the appropriate to a bunch of critics in an ivory tower.

[Julius Seeker]

I've always thought the Civilization series had great music. Civ 2, in my opinion, still remains the best.

Why Civ 4 now? It is probably a result of the composer releasing it on his album last year.

[Don]

Civ music seems to fit with the generic grandoise/epic type that'd do well in such awards, but I don't think it was any more special compared to other games with good music.

If I hired the choir that did Civ 4 to do Hunter versus Hunter on Megaman, what's stopping them from winning the same award? Well I guess Megaman music isn't quite right for this kind of stuff, so I can hire someone to rewrite the music into something that fits their expectation.

[Kupek]

I can't speak Italian, but I can tell that opera singers are damned good.

Anyway, it doesn't change my opinion at all. It's just interesting.

[Flip]

It's just interesting.

Exactly the point.