Famed producer reveals exactly how the Grammys jumped the shark… and why pop music peaked in the ’80s

A veteran record producer and musician has blasted the state of modern music ahead of the upcoming Grammy Awards next month.

Rick Beato, who is now a professional music critic and analyst on YouTube, offered a brutal assessment of the 2026 Song of the Year nominees in a video shared with his 5.4million subscribers.

The famed producer compared this year’s nominees with the 1984 Grammys, which saw The Police win Song of the Year for ‘Every Breath You Take’.

The ceremony was also the same year that Michael Jackson won Album of the Year for Thriller, and had two songs ––’Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’–– nominated for Song of the Year.

Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’, Irene Cara’s ‘Flashdance… What a Feeling’, and Michael Sembello’s ‘Maniac’ rounded out the rest of the Song of the Year nominees. 

Beato first pointed out that many of the songs nominated in 1984 had just a single songwriter credited, rather than a multitude of writers and samples like many of today’s hits have.

He then shifted focus to this year’s nominees, starting with Doechii’s ‘Anxiety’.

‘That song is actually based on a Gotye song from 2011 called “Somebody That I Used to Know”, so it’s a direct sample of that song,’ he explained.

‘But that song is actually a direct sample of Luiz Bonfá’s 1967 song “Saville”, so I guess Doechii just took the Gotye song, removed the vocals, and then sang her own song over it?’ 

Next, Beato took aim at Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s ‘Luther’, which spent thirteen weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 last year. 

‘The song is actually based on a Luther Vandross song from 1982 called “If This World Were Mine”, which was written by Marvin Gaye,’ Beato said.

‘And this song has ten songwriters,’ he added, before playing a snippet of the hip-hop track.

‘So it took ten people to write that song. Am I gonna hear this song in forty years like those other songs? I don’t think so,’ he added.

Beato then blasted Lady Gaga’s ‘Abracadabra’, calling it ‘a very run-of-the-mill dance song’ with ‘nothing memorable about it’.

He also pointed out that it uses an interpolation of the Siouxsie and the Banshees hit ‘Spellbound’, bringing the total number of songwriters for ‘Abracadabra’ up to seven.

Bruno Mars and K-pop star Rosé also used an interpolation for their chart-topping hit ‘APT’, taking the melody from Toni Basil’s Mickey.

‘I don’t mean to keep harping on this, but this song took eleven people to write an incredible lightweight song,’ Beato said of ‘APT’.

‘When I hear this, this is like the most unserious song. It sounds like a song for five-year-olds!’

The final singer in Beato’s firing line was Sabrina Carpenter and her No. 1 hit ‘Manchild’, which the producer called ‘such a generic sounding song’. 

‘Sabrina Carpenter’s got some way better songs than this,’ he added. 

Fortunately there were a handful of Song of the Year nominees that Beato did approve of.

He singled out Bad Bunny’s ‘DTMF’ for its ‘unique production’ and the mega-hit ‘Golden’ from the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack, which he called ‘interesting and melodic’.

However, his favorite track of all the nominees was the Billie Eilish ballad ‘Wildflower’, which he called ‘the best song on the entire list’.

‘This song is actually great,’ he gushed. ‘It has a great melody, it’s not overproduced, it’s got a beautiful vocal performance on it.’ 

He also pointed out that Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell were responsible for writing and producing the entire song between them. 

‘No one’s gonna remember these songs that were written by three, four, seven, ten, eleven people, forty years from now,’ he said, before stating that the hits from the 1984 Grammys, like ‘Beat It’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ are still getting streamed today and discovered by new listeners.

‘Nobody will remember these songs from today three years from now. They won’t,’ he added.