Album of the Year

Album of the Year at the Grammys. Coldplay are, well, Coldplay. Let’s face it: We all wanted to know the name of the song in the iTunes commercial. For all the hype surrounding those albums, there was one odd man out. Ne-Yo’s Year of the Gentleman was also nominated. It didn’t garner nearly as much attention — neither did Raising Sand, but I digress — and nobody really thought it had a chance. Chivalry is dead after all.

While no one believed that the Recording Academy would really give Lil Wayne or Radiohead the award, there was always that question in the back of our minds, like, “Wouldn’t that be crazy?” And while everyone knew Robert Plant and Alison Krauss would win, we still thought, “Wouldn’t it be so cool if Wayne or Thom Yorke mumbled through their acceptance speech?”

That didn’t seem to bother Ne-Yo, however. He told us in December that he was excited he had six chances to win a Grammy. “One nomination would have been enough for me,” he said. “How do you do anything but smile at that?” He also wasn’t too keen on the idea of Year of the Gentleman being seen as “soft.” Sway caught up with Ne-Yo on the Grammy red carpet, and he asked him whether or not he was fearful of how the record would be perceived.