Hey Kanye: Taylor pulled a Swift one at Grammys

Where was Kanye West when we needed him?

Cute, country music pixie Taylor Swift walked away with Album of the Year at Sunday night's Grammy Awards. I kept hoping that the evil Kanye, that egomaniacal hip-hop rock star, would bum-rush the stage -- just like he did at last fall's MTV Video Music Awards -- and tell the world that Swift shouldn't have won, that others were more deserving.

Yeah, I know -- wishing Kanye on Taylor again makes me a brute, a cad and a lessor jihadist.

Taylor, this is nothing personal .¤.¤. well, yeah, I guess it is. I just don't believe your album, "Fearless," was that fearless musically. I just don't believe it was worthy of absconding with Grammy's most prestigious prize.

You now are tied with the Beatles for number of Album of the Year Grammys -- one apiece. And you have one more Album of the Year title than Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, the Rolling Stones, Public Enemy, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane combined. Yes, not one of those immortals ever won an Album of the Year accolade.

The four Grammys you won Sunday are four more than either Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or the Doors ever won in any category -- yep, Zep, Jimi and Jimbo Mojo-risin' got skunked by Mr. Grammy throughout their entire careers.

Taylor, I believe your poppy-pop country -- all the rage in Nashville for more than a decade or two now -- should not have even won Country Album of the Year, which it did.

Nothing personal, Taylor -- well, yeah, I guess it is. I'm sort of passionate about music.

Yes, it's been 35 years since I got into one of those my-band-can-beat-up-your-band dust-ups (I spent many, many hours of my teenage days explaining to my younger brother why Led Zep were the overlords of rock music and Kiss, his fav band, were fleas on a dog's buttocks).

But damnit, I get sick and tired when the Grammys -- allegedly the most prestigious music awards in this sector of the universe -- screw up the musical space-time continuum with their goofy, inexplicable votes that reward the safe and innocuous while damning the innovative, the dangerous, the deeply visionary and the seriously, complexly multitalented.

And I'm telling you, it's not just us rock and hip-hop freaks who are shaking our heads and muttering "What the frak?"

You, Taylor, are one of the very few country artists ever to win Album of the Year, joining Glen Campbell in 1968, the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack in 2002 and the Dixie Chicks in 2007. But what about that gagging sound I heard rumbling down from Possum Hollow, Tennessee, on Sunday night? That was George Jones and Merle Haggard choking on their respective tequila worms as pundits began proclaiming a "country" artist had won the biggie Grammy for only the third time in the history of the universe.

"Yessir Merle (cough cough), she's pretty and all, but the yodelin' that Yao Ming Chinese basketball fella does in his locker room shower is more country than her!"

Indeed.

But you watch -- one of my music critic colleagues, somewhere, will write a snarky piece about how you, Taylor, actually deserved your Album of the Year Grammy, and how we "defenders of the true faith" are self-righteous, elitist jugheads who pull Toby Keith stickers off car bumpers and write college thesis papers on "The Hegelian Dionysian-Apollonian Dialectic as Reflected in the Genius of G.G. Allin."

Meanwhile, music fans, suppose an impish genie comes up to you and says, "In the afterlife -- your afterlife -- you have a choice of two soundtracks to listen to: Either all the music that has won Grammy Awards, or all the music that has not. Choose, quickly!"

Me, I'll choose that great iPod in the Sky that includes the Beatles' "Revolver" and "Abbey Road," Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet," all the work of Hank Williams, Roxy Music, the Supremes and the Waterboys, some Petty, all but one Marvin Gaye song, all but one Louis Prima song, some Dino, etc.

Taylor, I suggest you do the same .¤.¤. nothing personal. Yeah, I guess it is.

Rick de Yampert is The Daytona Beach News-Journal's entertainment writer. He can be reached at rick.deyampert@news-jrnl.com