The only three US Presidents to have won Grammy Awards
Any artist can strive for their entire career in the hopes of one day winning a Grammy. While the hallowed awards ceremony is still held in high esteem by the greater music industry, the award for the best songs and albums of any respective year pales in comparison to the massive changes going on in the greater music scene. Although a handful of great artists have been given their just due with a shower of Grammy Awards, no one expects a leading politician to take the top spot.
Then again, the realm of pop music has never shied away from political doctrine. Throughout the 1960s, a small group of the biggest artists in the world were making their living out of making tracks that had to do with hot-button issues, from Neil Young’s critique of law enforcement on ‘Ohio’ to modern day greats Run the Jewels carrying on the tradition with the song ‘JU$T’ off of their fourth record.
While the Grammys have been partial to songs that have clear societal messages, a handful of US presidents have managed to get an award as well. Then again, none of the leaders of the free world were going to make it to the top spot by making their own ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
The first time a President was given a Grammy Award was when Jimmy Carter received the award for ‘Best Spoken Word Album’ for retelling his book, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. Written in the mid-2000s, Carter’s look at how America is functioning in the modern age struck a nerve with people still coming to terms with how to process their grief post-9/11 as well as how people are conducting themselves in the wake of the Iraq War.
This would start a healthy career for Carter on the Grammys stage, notching up two more awards in the same category for his biography A Full Life: Reflections at 90 and in 2019 for Faith: A Journey For All. Though President Carter may have had his eye on the moral construct of the country, fellow President Bill Clinton had a more lighthearted Grammy Award win.
While he had earned a Grammy nod for his biography My Life, Clinton was granted the award for ‘Best Spoken Word Album for Children’ thanks to his work on the 2004 children’s piece Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Beintus. Even by children’s book standards, Clinton’s competition was also reasonably stiff, going up against Jim Broadbent for his retelling of Winnie The Pooh as well as Monty Python veteran Eric Idle for his retelling of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The most recent President to receive the award happened well before he was even sitting in The White House. Sandwiched between Clinton and Carter’s wins in 2005 and 2007, Barack Obama took home the award for ‘Best Spoken Word Album’ for his memoir Dreams of My Father, depicting his journey from Hawaii to Harvard Law School.
The year after Carter’s first Grammy win, Obama was called back to the stage for The Audacity of Hope, released the same year he was elected President. Although most Presidents weren’t looking to be recognised by the Academy of Recording Arts, their dedication to their craft has birthed words with the same cadence and authority as any excellent hit song.
