Best New Artist (From Five Years Ago)

You could practically hear the shouts erupting from the underground as hipsters across the nation gathered in worship for one brief moment during the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony.  The walls of thrift stores and coffee shops alike resonated with sounds of praise as the winner of the highly-esteemed “Best New Artist” award was presented to the well-known-among-the-unknown Wisconsin band, Bon Iver. While this was a joyous moment for some, the announcement left many viewers asking the same question: what is “bawn eye-vurr?” 

Bon Iver (pronounced “bone ee-VARE”) is a folk/indie rock band from Eau Claire, Wisconsin that, since 2007, has served as a quintessential example for the entire folk genre. That year, band frontman Justin Vernon self-released the band’s first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, independently. Suffering from mononucleosis (also known as “mono”), Vernon secluded himself in a cabin in northwestern Wisconsin to “hibernate.” This three-month seclusion led to the sorrow-filled and heartbreak-driven creation of For Emma. 

A year later, in 2008, the album was re-released on the Jagjaguwar label, receiving heavy praise and positive reception by critics and other sources.  Pitchfork Media, a magazine with a notoriously critical reputation, gave the album an 8.1 out of 10, as well as including it in their list of best albums of 2007. The New York Times newspaper called For Emma “irresistible.“ The combination of positive critical reception with catchy, emotional singles “Skinny Love” and “For Emma” drove Bon Iver’s fame and success to new heights in that next year and half. They performed “Skinny Love” on the Late Show with David Letterman in December of 2008, and multiple songs from For Emma and Blood Bank, an EP released by the band in 2009, have been used on popular TV shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Skins UK. Bon Iver has also performed at festivals such as Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and Glastonbury among others. In addition to gaining popularity among critics and the public, other artists began to notice Bon Iver’s recent breakthrough. One of these artists was hip-hop superstar Kanye West. West had heard of the folk band’s rise to fame and, after listening to For Emma and Blood Bank, became interested in Justin Vernon’s sound and vocal techniques. So interested, in fact, that Ye would actually invite Vernon out to Hawaii to be featured on his 2010 album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Justin would be featured on tracks such as “Dark Fantasy” and “Monster”, as well as have one of his songs, “Woods,” used as a basis for the creation of the track “Lost In the World” on MBDTF. 

In 2011, after their so-called rise to fame, Bon Iver released their semi-eponymous second album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver. This album took a whole different direction from the raw, hushed, acoustic sound of For Emma, integrating all new types of instruments and a new dynamic sound altogether. Vernon himself told Pitchfork Media, “I don’t find inspiration by just sitting down with a guitar anymore. I want to build a sound from scratch and then use that sound to make the song.” And that’s exactly what he did. Bon Iver, Bon Iver is a mixture of trance-like surrealistic tracks such as “Lisbon, OH” and “Michicant.” as well as hard-hitting cadences and swooning melodies in “Perth” and “Minnesota, WI.” The album itself is described as an “ambitious musical departure” from the band’s first album. Despite this large difference in sound between For Emma and the band’s sophomore album,  Bon Iver, Bon Iver received just as much, if not more, positive reception from critics. The album even went on to win Bon Iver their second Grammy of the night for Best Alternative Music Album.

Despite this apparent explosion of fame, Bon Iver was still merely an unknown to the majority of pop culture observers. So, when the 2012 Grammy Awards came along and that ever-so-often mispronounced name was announced as the Grammy’s Best New Artist of 2012, heads were turned and eyebrows were raised. This confusion was present in both the musically oblivious public, who continued to wonder who this bearded singer-songwriter was and what he was doing on that stage instead of Skrillex or Nicki Minaj, and also in the hipster realm of listeners, who wondered why an artist whose career is going on five years in duration is just now winning an award for “Best New Artist.” Whichever category you happen to fall into, Bon Iver is definitely worth a listen. After all, he didn’t win two Grammys for nothing.  Just make sure you learn to pronounce it correctly.