Contributor

Despite Queen's legacy of chart smashes and classic rock standards, it's a No. 86 hit from 1979 still ignored by radio that's everywhere in 2019.

As the show gears up to air Sunday, Feb. 10, it’s worth wondering whether the Grammys have ever, in three decades, given heavy metal a fair shake. Has any real progress been made since the Tull blaspheming, or is the ceremony’s most assailing category forever doomed to shred into the void?

A year from now, when the 2010s officially wrap and we consider all the stamps this industry-morphing decade has left on popular music, one effect should be obvious — the 2010s has transmuted the traditional album format, from a once-fixed block of songs into something more fluid and bound to an artist’s creative whims, as well as their audience’s craving for new content.