You’ve made history – but more importantly, you’ve made a stunning song
By Nigel Becker
“Oh my God… I’m so surprised,” Bonnie Raitt said as she accepted the 2023 Grammy Award for Song of the Year, for “Just Like That.”
She can’t have been the only one. In the run-up to the ceremony, the chattering class had declared that Harry Styles was the frontrunner (“someone should probably start clearing mantle space in Harry’s house,” the Seattle Times proclaimed), with a side-debate of whether Taylor Swift could best Adele. Apart from a few exceptions, Grammy forecasters ignored Raitt altogether, unless it was to discount her song as insufficiently “zeitgeisty.”
Raitt herself didn’t seem to have high expectations, either. On the red carpet, she emphasized that she was “really proud” just to be nominated and to represent the “oldsters.”
But then, Dr. Jill Biden tore open the Grammy envelope and announced, “And the Grammy goes to… ‘Just Like That.’” There was a moment of stunned silence – then, applause erupted, and a flabbergasted Raitt wended her way to the stage.
The outcome was surprising, not least due to the song’s obscurity; pre-Grammys, it was notching just 10,000 streams a day, and close to zero sales. It was far less surprising, though, when one considers the songwriting.
It’s not my aim to downplay the songwriting feats of any of the other nominees; I have no desire to provoke the wrath of their dedicated fan armies, and more importantly, each one (even “ABCDEFU”) was fun, heart-rending, and/or thought-provoking.
My aim, rather, is to sing the praises of “Just Like That.” The lyrics tell the real-life story of a woman whose son died years earlier (“He’d be 25 today”) and who donated his heart to a patient in need. Years later, the boy who received that heart – now a man – comes to her home to thank her, and to allow her to listen to her son’s heart, still beating inside him. Raitt credited the late John Prine as a lyrical inspiration, and she does him proud.
It’s easy to get choked up just typing the synopsis, and even easier to lose composure listening to it: the minimalist, folky performance spotlights Raitt’s smoky vocals and manages to sound mournful yet thankful all at once. It’s a timeless song that could work in 1972, 1992, or 2022, and that Linda Ronstadt, the Chicks, or Taylor Swift could record proudly.
The track is all the more impressive because, as Raitt acknowledged in her acceptance speech, “I don’t write a lot of songs.” Indeed, this was the first time she received a Grammy as a songwriter rather than a vocalist. She’s a great interpreter, whether bringing other songwriters’ tunes to life (“Love Letter”) or putting a new spin on tracks recorded by other greats before her (“Need You Tonight”).
But as she’s shown repeatedly – with “Nick of Time” back in 1989, and with “Just Like That” today – she makes the most of the songs she writes herself. Interestingly, too, it was the only one of the ten SOTY nominees to be written by a single songwriter, and the first single-writer SOTY since Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” in 2008.
Also importantly, as Time highlighted, the song brings an unusual point of view: that of an older woman, a perspective that’s often neglected in the music industry. U2 was the last over-40 artist to win SOTY, 17 years ago, and you have to rewind to 1998 to find the last time a woman over 40 won (Shawn Colvin, for her sly murder ballad “Sunny Came Home”). In fact, a perusal of past SOTY winners appears to reveal that Raitt is the oldest woman ever to win the award. This all makes the narrator of “Just Like That” – the mom of a would-be-25-year-old – all the more striking.
It’s impressive that the Song of the Year was written single-handedly by a woman over 70, but that’s not why it deserved to win. “Just Like That” is Song of the Year because it’s emotionally affecting, empathetic, and minimalist in the best possible way. I’d expect nothing less from an icon like Bonnie Raitt.
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