The Strokes‘ Julian Casablancas took the band’s Grammys win as an opportunity to share his distaste for blues rock.
The band won their first ever Grammy on Sunday night (March 14), picking up the Best Rock Album award for their 2019 album ‘The New Abnormal’.
After giving a delightfully awkward virtual acceptance speech, Casablancas spoke to journalists in the Grammys’ press room, and spoke about the state of rock music today.
“I kind of always make fun of rock’n’roll so I think it’s kind of funny, or cool, or fitting, that we won the award,” he said.
“I think that people that say things are dead, I just feel like their imagination, possibly, has died…. Honestly, there’s room for so many genres of music—not necessarily blues rock, please, no more of that.”
Beyoncé was the big winner of the night at the 2021 Grammys, taking home four awards and breaking the record for the most Grammy wins by a female artist and by any singer, male or female. Taylor Swift, meanwhile, became the first woman to win Album Of The Year three times, picking up the biggest award of the evening for ‘folklore’.
Performances at the ceremony, which took place in Los Angeles, came from Harry Styles, BTS, who created their own Grammys stage in Seoul for a run-through of ‘Dynamite’, Taylor Swift, who performed a medley of songs from ‘folklore’ and ‘evermore’, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, and Haim, amongst others.
Reviewing The Strokes’ Grammy-winning ‘The New Abnormal’ upon its release last year, NME wrote: “While the album explores a few new directions, it’s still often fairly recognisable. The best stuff sounds familiar – few people ever have, or ever will, write a better riff than that of ‘Last Nite’ – and the worst, only peppered in small amounts, feels beyond experimental, as if pointedly ignoring what everyone else in indie rock is doing to stay fresh nowadays.
“Instead Julian and co. often settle into an afterlife of cantankerous synths only belonging to The Strokes.”
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