There are few better ways to kick off your music career than winning Best New Artist at the Grammys. But these one-hit wonders all proved one unfortunate truth — that industry recognition doesn't guarantee success.
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00:00There are few better ways to kick off your music career than winning Best New Artist
00:04at the Grammys, but these one-hit wonders all proved one unfortunate truth — that
00:09industry recognition doesn't guarantee success.
00:12One of the biggest music fads of the 2000s was a revival of 60s soul-style singing with
00:17lyrics about modern concerns, as performed by British female vocalists.
00:22Singers such as Duffy or Adele nailed this era's sound, but it was Amy Winehouse who
00:27paved the way.
00:28Wearing a retro beehive hairdo and vintage stage outfits, the prodigiously talented
00:33Winehouse sent audiences crazy as she belted out ballads about love and heartbreak.
00:38Her 2003 debut album Frank only produced some minor hit singles in the UK, however, so the
00:44U.S.-based Grammy Awards deemed it acceptable for Winehouse to contend for Best New Artist
00:49at the 2008 ceremony.
00:51By then, though, her back-to-black single, Rehab, had crossed into the top ten of the
00:55pop chart while also faring respectably on the R&B and alternative rock lists.
01:00Winehouse's next single, You Know I'm No Good, flopped at No. 76, but Grammy voters didn't
01:05seem to care about that.
01:07Rehab won the prizes for Record of the Year and Song of the Year, and Winehouse was given
01:11Best New Artist over Paramore and Taylor Swift.
01:14Nowadays, of course, many of Winehouse's songs have become as popular and beloved as Rehab,
01:20but things weren't quite so simple at the time.
01:23None of her subsequent releases made an impact on American radio or record sales, and Winehouse
01:27never got a chance to stage a comeback stateside.
01:30We're going to turn now to a major loss in the music world tonight, the gifted singer
01:34Amy Winehouse found dead in her London home.
01:36She was just 27.
01:38Some quintessentially early-2000s talents competed for Best New Artist at the 45th Grammy
01:43Awards in 2003, but Ashanti, Michelle Branch, Avril Lavigne, and John Mayer all lost out
01:50to the act who had sold more albums than any of them in the previous year, Norah Jones.
01:56Jones' father was sitar legend and frequent George Harrison collaborator Ravi Shankar,
02:01but she carved out a much different niche as an old-fashioned, husky-voiced jazz singer.
02:06And that turned out to be a deft choice, too.
02:09Jones' album Come Away With Me sold a staggering 27 million copies after its release in 2002.
02:15One single from the album, Don't Know Why, received major radio airplay, and it reached
02:20No. 30 and No. 4 on Billboard's Pop and Adult Contemporary charts, respectively.
02:25That same tune won Jones record of the year at the Grammys.
02:29That same night, she took home Best New Artist as well as Album of the Year for Come Away
02:33With Me.
02:34Sadly, Jones' subsequent releases have failed to hit those heady heights, and she's yet
02:38to make a return to the upper echelons of the pop charts.
02:42Most of the acts nominated for Best New Artist at the 2011 Grammy Awards had a reasonable
02:46shot at winning.
02:47Voters gave nods to future stars Mumford & Sons, Florence & the Machine, Justin Bieber,
02:52and Drake.
02:53On the night, however, the award went to the underdog.
02:56That's not bad for a night's work.
02:58I would say it's not bad at all, yeah.
03:01Esperanza Spalding is best known as a progressive jazz artist and faculty member of the prestigious
03:07Berklee College of Music.
03:09Experimental jazz musicians don't often win major Grammys, nor do they typically sell
03:13many records.
03:15Spalding's first two albums of the 2000s, Junjo and Esperanza, sold moderately well
03:20in jazz circles, while Chamber Music Society, the record that won her Best New Artist, enjoyed
03:25a brief sales surge from curious Grammys followers.
03:28Enduring Goodwill also lifted Spalding's next album, Radio Music Society, to a top ten debut
03:33in 2012.
03:35Spalding still makes music today, and she's won a few more Grammys, too, but she's never
03:39had a hit single since.
03:42Shelby Lynne won Best New Artist at the 43rd Grammy Awards despite not really being a new
03:47artist at all.
03:49In fact, Lynne's critically acclaimed record, I Am Shelby Lynne, was her sixth full-length
03:54release.
03:55In the early 1990s, Lynne had released a handful of albums that ranged from gritty, authentic
03:59country to more heavily produced pop-oriented fare.
04:03After a few image and sound makeovers, as well as a label change or two, I Am Shelby
04:08Lynne hit stores in 2000.
04:10Soon after her Grammy triumph, Lynne recorded and released a follow-up, Love, Shelby, alongside
04:15Glenn Ballard, the writer-producer who had previously worked on Alanis Morissette's pop-rock
04:20mega-hit Jagged Little Pill.
04:22But through the 90s and after her Best New Artist win, Lynne never landed any songs on
04:27the pop chart.
04:28Gotta Get Back and Wall in Your Heart, singles from I Am Shelby Lynne and Love, Shelby, respectively,
04:33barely reached the lower rungs of the adult contemporary chart in 2000 and 2001.
04:38Lynne has been absent from the charts ever since.
04:41In 1991, Mark Cohen released his self-titled debut album, showing off a sophisticated adult
04:46pop sound suited to his throaty voice, yearning lyrics, and soulful piano work.
04:51Cohen demonstrated a knowledge and appreciation for American musical forms, most emphatically
04:56on the gospel-infused single Walking in Memphis.
04:59Garnering airplay on adult contemporary, rock, country, and pop stations, Walking in Memphis
05:04reached No. 13 on the Billboard Pop Chart.
05:07Cohen went into the 34th Grammy Awards with nominations for Best Pop Vocal Performance
05:11– Male, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist.
05:14Now that's one you might not want to win, right?
05:17That's what I've been told.
05:18Yeah, because some of those cats go away and my Sharona lands.
05:22He ended up winning Best New Artist in a stacked category that also included Boys to Men and
05:27Seal.
05:28Yet, Cohen struggled to repeat the success of Walking in Memphis.
05:32He's since released five more albums, with only the first garnering a Platinum Album
05:36Award from the Recording Industry Association of America.
05:39Two other singles from 1991, before Cohen won the Grammy, are the musician's only other
05:44Hot 100 placements.
05:46Silver Thunderbird petered out at No. 63, and True Companion reached No. 80.
05:51Smooth and mature soft rock ruled the music in the 1970s, to the great benefit of the
05:56Starland vocal band.
05:58In 1976, the Four Voice Act signed to Winsong Records, operated by soft rock king John Denver,
06:05and released a self-titled record.
06:07The first single on that album was Afternoon Delight, which went to No. 1 on the pop chart,
06:11hit No. 5 on the adult contemporary chart, and snuck onto the country chart, too.
06:16When the nominations for the 19th Grammy Awards were released, the Starland vocal band received
06:21four nods, including for Record of the Year and Best New Artist.
06:25They took home the latter prize, defeating disco one-hit wonder Wild Cherry and arena
06:29rock sensation Boston.
06:31But neither subsequent releases nor their own TV variety program could keep the success
06:36going.
06:38Starland vocal band made just one more appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, Loving You With
06:42My Eyes hit No. 71 in 1980.
06:46The winner of the Best New Artist category at the 20th Grammy Awards wasn't a complete
06:50unknown at the time.
06:52Debbie Boone is the daughter of Pat Boone, the 1950s pop-turned-country singer best known
06:57for singing sanitized versions of raunchy early rock records.
07:01In the fall of 1977, the younger Boone's first single, You Light Up My Life, jumped off the
07:06soundtrack of a flop movie of the same name and went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard
07:11Hot 100.
07:12Okay, what's the name of the song?
07:15You Light Up My Life.
07:16You Light Up My Life.
07:17Right.
07:18You Light Up My Life, take one.
07:20It held that position for ten weeks, marking a chart record at the time.
07:24The song was such a juggernaut that it propelled Boone to a Best New Artist award, defeating
07:29the Bee Gees' younger brother Andy Gibb and popular rock band Foreigner.
07:34While those acts kept the hits coming for many more years, however, Boone only made
07:38it to the lower part of the Hot 100 twice in 1978, and then never again after that.
07:44She later reinvented herself as a country singer, and had a few successes in that regard,
07:48most notably the 1980 No. 1 country hit, Are You on the Road to Loving Me Again?
07:54The mid-1970s was a particularly explosive era in music.
07:58Arena rock, disco, folk pop, soul, soft rock, and punk artists vied for chart space during
08:04this period, and this variety was well-represented in the Best New Artist category at the 17th
08:09Grammy Awards.
08:11Multiple genre singer-songwriter Phoebe Snow, hard rock supergroup Bad Company, and Motown
08:16singer Johnny Bristol were all nominated in 75.
08:19In the end, though, they all lost to a man best known for composing film scores and recreating
08:24the ragtime hits of the early 1900s.
08:27Marvin Hamlisch had enjoyed a successful 1974 and 1975, and the Grammys honored his achievements
08:34appropriately.
08:35He won Best New Artist, Best Original Score for his work on the movie The Way We Were,
08:40Song of the Year for writing that film's theme song, and Best Pop Instrumental Performance
08:44for The Entertainer.
08:46The latter had been written in 1902 by Scott Joplin, and Hamlisch's recording for the period
08:51movie The Sting became an unlikely smash, topping the soft rock chart and peaking at
08:55number three on the pop chart.
08:57"'Your boss is quite a card player, Mr. Kelly.
09:00How does he do it?'
09:02He cheats."
09:03Hamlisch would never make another singles chart of any kind, however, making his Best
09:08New Artist win all the more remarkable.
09:11Folk-inspired singer-songwriters had a big cultural moment in the 1970s, and one of the
09:16hottest, for a short while, was Ricki Lee Jones.
09:19Inflecting her recordings with elements of jazz and beat poetry, Jones released her self-titled
09:23debut album in 1979.
09:26Her first song was a hit across genres, making Billboard's R&B and Adult Contemporary charts
09:31in addition to the pop-based Hot 100.
09:33The playful and soulful Chucky's In Love reached number four on that list.
09:37In the summer of 1979, Jones' follow-up single, Youngblood, only reached as far as number
09:4240 on the same chart.
09:44This was the last time Jones would come anywhere close to releasing a hit song, but that didn't
09:49matter to Grammy voters.
09:50Chucky's In Love landed nominations for Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance
09:55Female, and it was a key factor in Jones' Best New Artist nomination.
10:00In 1980, she won her Grammy for Best New Artist, beating Robin Williams and Dire Straits.
10:05After that, Jones eked out a couple of moderately successful singles in the early 1980s and
10:10built a respectable career, but none of her subsequent songs ever quite rocked the charts.
10:16In the 1960s, a singer could become a household name off the back of a prominent Broadway
10:20musical or a TV variety show, and this was the path to stardom for Robert Goulet.
10:26After landing a few roles on Canadian TV in the 1950s, Goulet portrayed Sir Lancelot in
10:32the original 1960 Broadway production of the King Arthur musical, Camelot.
10:37The young actor was the breakout star of a musical so long-running and culturally significant
10:42that its name was used as a nickname for President John F. Kennedy's administration.
10:46After appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, Columbia signed him to a recording contract.
10:51But Goulet's first single, What Kind of Fool Am I?, wasn't a hit, reaching No. 89 on the
10:59Billboard Pop Chart.
11:01Nevertheless, the persistent power of Camelot helped Goulet win the Grammy Award for Best
11:06New Artist of 1962, over the four seasons, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.
11:11Those groups would go on to place many singles in the top 40, while Goulet would do it just
11:15once more.
11:16My Love, Forgive Me made it to No. 16 in late 1964.
11:21And while Goulet went on to enjoy a long career as a film actor and a live entertainer, his
11:25career in the recording industry never lived up to that Best New Artist win.
11:30In the late 1950s, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences began handing
11:34out Grammy Awards to those acts that its members found to be pretty and sophisticated.
11:39As a result, the early Grammys were decidedly out of sync with what was actually popular,
11:44particularly with young audiences.
11:47At the sixth Grammy Awards, for example, an act called The Swingle Singers won the prize
11:51for Best New Artist.
11:53The group won out for their novel performance style.
11:55They were an eight-part choir who scattered well-known classical compositions.
12:00In addition to Best New Artist, the Grammys also nominated The Swingle Singers for Album
12:05of the Year for Bach's Greatest Hits, which was sold in some territories as Jazz Sebastian
12:10Bach.
12:11The record sold moderately well in the U.S., but it never reached the top ten and didn't
12:15feature many hit singles at all.