Last night, CBS aired the “Grammy’s Salute Aretha Franklin” tribute that was organized after she passed in 2018.
This comes in an ever growing lineup of tribute concerts to legendary artists, beginning in 2014 marking the 60th anniversary of The Beatles coming to America and debuting on The Ed Sullivan Show. They are pretty standard fare. The biggest hits and some surprising deep cuts are selected, huge stars are slated to perform them, and sometimes there are interesting collaborations. Sometimes, they bring together two artists that don’t normally find themselves playing together, and sometimes, it’s a performance that makes people scratch their heads that the producers allowed that to actually be televised.
While we know how these events turn out, and some may question why they are put together and who watches them, I would argue that they are a necessity. I am a person that likes to go to music from decades ago and discover the popular artists, as well as artists that I find along the way. And there are kids today that may not know who those artists are. They don’t know Fleetwood Mac, Carole King, Blondie, The Supremes, I could go on. Those are all artists that are in heavy rotation on my phone, and it boggles me that a lot of people my age don’t know their work and get the same joy I do when I listen to those songs. And then I fear that all of that music will be forgotten and lost to time, when they are songs that are superior to half of what is played on the radio.
So, while these tribute concerts seem like a televised pageant, we need to be reminded of the music that came before what is being produced now, from the legends to those that need our memories to be jogged a bit.
Written by Kerry Archbold