Clarifying the Grammy awards

You know your Kendrick Lamar from your Migos, your ‘Despacito’ from your ‘That’s What I Like.’

You are your trivia team’s go-to person whenever music history is the subject.

But we won’t hold it against you if you don’t have a clue what the difference is between Grammy’s Song of the Year and Record of the Year categories.

Well, here’s some help, straight from the Grammy website:

Song of the Year: This award goes to the person who wrote the song. So while Bruno Mars may have sung a song, he wouldn’t win it. The person who wrote it would.

Record of the Year: This goes to the person who performed the song — and all those involved in the making of the song, like the producer, the engineer the mixer.

All clear now? Good.

Now we can clear up confusion on another Grammy category:

Album of the Year: Lots of people confuse this category with Record of the Year, because we like to use the words ‘record’ and ‘album’ interchangeably. Just think of Album of the Year as the Grammy’s Best Picture award, going to the year’s absolute best musical work of art. The award for album of the year goes to pretty much everyone involved with an album.

And while we’re at it, let’s tackle confusion over another coveted win.

Best New Artist: Why is there confusion over that one? It’s because the Grammy’s have a murky definition for the word ‘new.’ This year’s winner, Alessia Cara, actually put out her debut album, ‘Know-It-All,’ and an EP of four songs back in 2015.

So how is she considered to be ‘new?’ The Recording Academy, the good folks who hand out the Grammys, changed the rules for Best New Artist a couple of years ago, to better reflect the changes in how music from new artists is developed and promoted. Although her musical career began three years ago, Cara had a string of hit songs off of ‘Know-It-All’ that stretched well into 2017. Long enough for her to be considered ‘new’ for this year’s Grammys.