by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
Another Grammy Awards program has come and gone, with as
much craziness as ever. I’m not here to
talk about Kanye’s rudeness or Annie Lennox’s powerful performance, although
those were among the few moments I actually watched. I’d like to tell you about the Grammy-winning
music you can check out at the library.
At Litchfield we have just two of the Grammy-winning albums,
plus a movie. Did you know they award a
Grammy for best music film? This year it
went to 20 Feet from Stardom, a movie about backup singers. It won the Oscar for best documentary last
year.
One of the Grammy-winning albums at Litchfield is Mandatory Fun by Weird Al Yankovic, which won Best Comedy Album. Weird Al was
in top form again this year, with parodies of “Royals,” “Fancy,” and other big
hits that were so much better when he mocked them. In fact, even if you despise the song
“Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, the parody “Word Crimes” by Weird Al is a highly
entertaining grammar lesson, especially if you’re frustrated by the spelling
and grammar you see online.
The other Grammy-winning album in the Litchfield collection
is the soundtrack from the movie Frozen. It won awards for the best compilation soundtrack for visual media and
for best song written for visual media, “Let It Go.” If you haven’t heard that song, you’ve been
living in a cave for the past year.
The deluxe version of the soundtrack that our library owns
includes songs that were written for the movie and recorded as demos by the
songwriters, but that were discarded when the storyline changed. Did you know there was going to be a prophecy
about a ruler with a frozen heart, and that Elsa was going to be the bad
guy?
For some reason, most of the CDs I ordered that went on to
win Grammys were for the Grove City library’s collection this year. You can visit Grove City to check out Sam
Smith’s In the Lonely Hour, or you can order it and pick it up at the
Litchfield library. This album won the
Grammy for best pop vocal album, Sam Smith won the award for best new artist,
and the song “Stay with Me” won Record of the Year and Song of the Year. The young British singer-songwriter has a
retro sound that has gotten him compared with Adele.
Grove City also has the Beck album Morning Phase. This album won awards for Best Rock Album and
Album of the Year. Beck is an
experimental singer-songwriter who has been around for a couple of decades
without ever becoming really mainstream, although he has had a hit or two and has
won Grammy awards in the past. Reviewers
have described the album as a cohesive work of atmospheric folk-rock.
The winner of the award for best traditional pop vocal album
was Cheek to Cheek, a collaboration between Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Grove City has this album, as well. The pair may seem like an odd one, but they
sang “The Lady is a Tramp” together on one of Tony’s previous albums, and the
result was fantastic. She has the pipes
to sing the old standards, and the two get along well. The album includes Cole Porter and Irving
Berlin standards that could appeal to any generation.
Even more Grammy-winning CDs are available to order from
libraries in our system. Remember that
it is illegal to download borrowed CDs to your computer, iPod, or phone. But if you borrow a music CD from the
library, you can find out if you like it enough to buy the songs for
yourself. Look for Litchfield’s music
CDs next to the audiobooks and movies and Grove City's near the audiobooks and inspirational paperbacks.
