I don't normally pride myself on ignorance, but I have no idea who this Adele is, and from your review, I gather I'm not missing much. I haven't listened to much top-40 radio since about 1971 or 1972, when I realized my musical tastes did not conform to the least common denominator of the 13 year old girl demographic.
Another reason I have a profound lack of interest in watching the grammys (I'm tempted to correct that to grammies) is that while they occasionally give awards to what I consider real music, as opposed to synthetic plastic crap, they don't actually, I've been told, give air time to "those" categories. So, I'm curious. George Kahumoku was up for an award. Air time? I'm thinking probably not. I'm thinking the producers are focused on ratings and airing the top-selling popular garbage, which is popular, likely, only because it gets too much air time and the tone-deaf non-musical idiots watching think they're supposed to like it.
As to your other argument - I don't see it. In the era of Harburg and Gershwin, a singer-songwriter was at least 4 different people. Lyricist, composer, singer and instrumentalist. Harburg was a lyricist. Gershwin was a composer, and an instrumentalist, but as I understand it, could only work in the key of C and used some sort of wacky transposing piano. Dylan framed himself as a singer-songwriter, and when he started out, actually was 5 people, since he played both guitar and harmonica. If one were to examine his 5 roles separately, one would conclude he's an overextended lyricist. Yet, not only has he had a successful career making and selling his own records and performing in public, he's made a fortune in royalties on others covering his songs. Mighty clever for a guy with limited talents. While some might consider Dylan a composer, he got most of his tunes (and even some of his better-known lyrics) from old folk songs.
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Another reason I have a profound lack of interest in watching the grammys (I'm tempted to correct that to grammies) is that while they occasionally give awards to what I consider real music, as opposed to synthetic plastic crap, they don't actually, I've been told, give air time to "those" categories. So, I'm curious. George Kahumoku was up for an award. Air time? I'm thinking probably not. I'm thinking the producers are focused on ratings and airing the top-selling popular garbage, which is popular, likely, only because it gets too much air time and the tone-deaf non-musical idiots watching think they're supposed to like it.
As to your other argument - I don't see it. In the era of Harburg and Gershwin, a singer-songwriter was at least 4 different people. Lyricist, composer, singer and instrumentalist. Harburg was a lyricist. Gershwin was a composer, and an instrumentalist, but as I understand it, could only work in the key of C and used some sort of wacky transposing piano. Dylan framed himself as a singer-songwriter, and when he started out, actually was 5 people, since he played both guitar and harmonica. If one were to examine his 5 roles separately, one would conclude he's an overextended lyricist. Yet, not only has he had a successful career making and selling his own records and performing in public, he's made a fortune in royalties on others covering his songs. Mighty clever for a guy with limited talents. While some might consider Dylan a composer, he got most of his tunes (and even some of his better-known lyrics) from old folk songs.