Arcade Fire's Album of the Year

"What is an Arcade Fire and why are people excited for it?"

"Album of the year goes to: Arcadia Fire, WTF are they???"

I'm tempted to attribute the above misspelling of Arcade Fire to reading too much Tom Stoppard, but I think the closely trailing WTF safely rules that out. These two comments represent the topic that is feverishly being tweeted and facebooked about: who is Arcade Fire and why do they deserve to win album of the year. For those miffed tweeters, facebookers and bloggers, let's attempt to answer the question.

From what I can gather, the root of the problem is the differing opinions about the criteria of album of the year. A girl's facebook comment succinctly illustrates one of the main reasons for outcry when she states that "anyone who wins album of the year should be known by EVERYONE". While I would like to avoid the dangerous tangent of debating the merit of award shows and review critics, I do see some problems with these complaints. I expect award shows, like the grammys, to choose artists based on musical merit and not popularity. If the award was given on popularity, Justin Beiber would have swept the awards. Now ideally popularity and merit should walk hand in hand, but often this is not the case in pop culture. If anything, I often use reviewers and award shows as a resource to find new artists; they save me some time sifting through thousands of the up and coming.

Another common compliant is that neither Eminem or Lady Gaga won. Both Eminem and Lady Gaga are great artists - I listen to them both. I think Eminem is an incredible rapper, and undoubtedly he was Arcade Fire's most menacing competition. However, Arcade Fire won this year because they have mastered an important criterion that people commonly overlook when deciding who to back for album of the year. A majority believe that album of the year equates to the largest number of best selling hits per album. Yes, this is part of it. But it also about the album as a whole: how the songs cohesively work together to create a larger work of art (i.e. the album). Arcade Fire has been experimenting with this in their previous albums, and The Suburbs represents a masterpiece where they seem to have nearly perfected it. In this album, Arcade Fire coagulates sixteen diverse songs into one fantastic symphony. That my friends, is why the unknown band, Arcade Fire, won best album of the year.