Meet Al Walser, a Grammy nominee for Best Dance Recording. Sure, this is a metal blog, so you might not be familiar with Al, a keytar-playing artist who’s nominated in the same category as Skrillex, Avicii, Swedish House Mafia and Calvin Harris. The problem is, no one else is familiar with him either, and he’s essentially trolled the Grammys.
The song Walser was nominated for, “I Can’t Live Without You,” isn’t exactly what anyone would call a club banger. In fact, the Rebecca Black-like video, as of his nomination, had less than 7,000 views. His Facebook page only has 1,621 likes. And he’s also hawking a book called “Make It Big,” described as “The Secret Path To Break in Today’s Music Industry.” Until two days ago, nobody would have believed him, but now he’s a Grammy-nominated artist. How did that happen?
Spin has some theories on how Walser got nominated, and it points to the increasingly out-of-touch Grammy voting members that we’ve bitched about repeatedly. A blogger and non-voting Grammy member, Elitaste, points out that the Grammys have their own social networking site, Grammy365. Since Walser is a member, the blog pulled up his page, which shows that he has about 4,160 contacts. By relentlessly networking with his contacts, many of whom are even more out of touch with EDM than they are metal, his name became familiar enough to garner a nomination. Hopefully this will be a wake up call to the entire organization, who should really be ashamed of themselves. That’s not likely to happen though. And while we might question how a band like Sum 41 could be nominated for best hard rock/metal act, at least it’s someone we’ve heard of. Walser’s incredibly bad video is after the jump.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJEdy301yVo[/youtube]
