It’s a new year. The days are short, the thermometer drops into the mid ‘20s and our TVs are being bombarded by Hollywood award show glitz and glamour.

Everyone knows what I’m talking about: The People’s Choice Awards, The Golden Globes, The Oscars, and most recently, the Grammys. These award shows only exist to flaunt and glorify already glamorous industries.

The industry-funded get-togethers are billed as opportunities to recognize the year’s bests performers, but what it really is is just an excuse to rent out a giant venue to have a party and the Grammys are the worst of these award show affairs.

Now, before you accuse me of picking on the Grammys, the other award shows like the Emmys, Oscars and the Tonys actually serve a purpose and pick the best of the best to honor their craft.

The Grammys, on the other hand, is just pure showboating.

The organization behind the Grammys, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, doesn’t even attempt to exclude anyone from winning an award.

With over 100 categories one can be eligible for; the Grammys just belittle themselves with the gratuitous amount of hardware they give out every year. Just this past week alone Beyoncé Knowles took home six Grammy trophies (a record for a female artist) and the mainstream country starlet Taylor Swift, took home a total of four, including the coveted album of the year.

Now, I am all for giving credit where credit is due, but the Grammys just overkill the entire process and that’s the underlying problem that causes the award show to drop ratings every year– it simply lacks importance.

Unlike the Grammys, other award shows such as the Oscars, Golden Globes or the Emmys is that an artist usually only receives one or two awards at best, but the Grammys just give them away. And the other thing about the Grammys is that it doesn’t even take itself seriously sometimes.

This stems from the fact that every year the musical powers that be decide it’s necessary to have respectable and talented artists team up and sing someone else’s song.

This year viewers had to sit through the mash-ups  of Lady Gaga and Elton John; Jamie Foxx, Slash, T-Pain and Doug E. Fresh; Taylor Swift and Stevie Nicks; and Celine Dion, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, Usher and Carrie Underwood.

I understand honoring an individual group or recording artist or one person covering their song, but jamming popular artists onto one stage to perform another person’s song is, like the awards themselves, overkill.

And you know when an award show is just a bunch of hot air when the hot topic for discussion surrounding the awards ceremony isn’t over who is going to win what category, but when all the discussion is centered on what Lady Gaga was going to do/wear that evening.

Designing a genre encompassing award show for music is just a doomed plan from the onset, with music, above any art form, being completely based on taste.

Most people will agree whoever wins Best Picture at the Oscars this year deserved the award or at least was a high caliber film, but each person’s own musical taste is so unique that in my classes the Monday morning following the Grammy awards all of the Lady Gaga-philes were up in arms about Taylor Swift’s theft of the honor of album of the year.

With its complete lack of significance combined with lackluster attempts to boost record-low ratings and music sales by cramming as many stars on the stage as they can, the Grammys is showboating at its finest.