Two nights ago, DREAM THEATER was awarded a Grammy in the “Best Metal Performance” at the 64th annual Grammy Awards, DREAM THEATER was nominated for “The Alien”, a track from their 2021 album “A View From The Top Of The World”.
DREAM THEATER guitarist John Petrucci accepted the award on the band’s behalf.
“Wow, this is absolutely insane,” he said in his acceptance speech. “On behalf of the entire band, I’d like to thank the Recording Academy and everybody who voted for us. You know, they used to tell us our songs were way too long, we used weird time signatures and there were too many guitar solos. In fact, this song is in 17/8, so try to tap your foot to it. But we just won a Grammy, so I’m glad we didn’t listen… All the DREAM THEATER fans around the world, you guys rock. We love you. For fans of prog and prog metal, stay true to your art. And it’s alive and well.”
The nominees in the “Best Metal Performance” category were:
“Genesis” – DEFTONES
“The Alien” – DREAM THEATER
“Amazonia” – GOJIRA
“Pushing The Tides” – MASTODON
“The Triumph Of King Freak (A Crypt Of Preservation And Superstition)” – ROB ZOMBIE
When “The Alien” came out in August 2021, Petrucci stated about the track: “It’s the first one we wrote together. It gives people a window into what it was like when we initially met up after all of those months off. It has the adventure, the untraditional structure, the heaviness, and the hooks. It really set the tone for the album. James LaBrie wrote the lyrics about the idea of terraforming and looking beyond our Earth for alternative settlements. Since we’re going beyond our planet, ‘The Alien’ turns out to be us. I thought it was a cool and creative lyric by James.”
DREAM THEATER‘s previous Grammy nominations were for the song “On The Backs Of Angels”, from 2011’s “A Dramatic Turn Of Events” album, and the single “The Enemy Inside” from 2013’s “Dream Theater”.
The 2022 ceremony was the first since The Recording Academy announced that it has made significant changes to its awards process to ensure that the Grammy Awards rules and guidelines are transparent and equitable. The show no longer uses anonymous review committees to determine its nominees. Now, all nominees are based solely on thousands of votes from the Academy‘s voting members. They also changed the number of categories in which Academy members can vote and added two new awards.
Back in January 2020, former Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan filed a discrimination charge against the Recording Academy of Arts & Sciences, alleging she was being retaliated against for reporting misconduct within the Academy. In the 46-page complaint, Dugan further alleged that “the Grammy voting process is ripe with corruption,” detailing secret committees the group used to “push forward artists with whom it has relationships.” She said that as many as 30 artists who were not selected by the 12,000 voting members were added to the possible nomination list.
Back in December, during an appearance on MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn‘s “No Fuckin’ Regrets With Robb Flynn” podcast Petrucci discussed DREAM THEATER‘s latest Grammy nomination.
He said: “The first Grammy nomination we had, FOO FIGHTERS were on there. And they won it. I remember Dave Grohl had said something like, ‘Oh, they should have got this,’ which I thought was nice. But this time, I don’t know if I’m gonna remember all of [the other artists that were nominated], but I think it’s GOJIRA and MASTODON [that we are up against], and it’s a cool list. I remember there were a couple of years where I was surprised at the nominees — it seemed a little bit strange — but this seems appropriate. So we’ll see. It’s fun. It’s an honor to get nominated. It’s cool. Doing what we do and the way that we do it and getting recognized in that world is something that I never would have expected. And now for us, this is the third [nomination], so it’s cool. It’s a good feeling.”
