HITS’S PROGNOSTICATING SKILLS REVEALED!

Scoff if you like at our dizzy attempts to predict the musical future, but you have to admit, we—and those of you who voted are included in this—did a pretty good job predicting the Grammy winners.

All right, truth be told, we only attempted to guess the winners in six categories (a mere 6% of the actual Grammy Awards handed out on Feb. 21), but as far as that segment is concerned, we batted .500.

Our Grammy Poll participants accurately predicted three of the six category winners: Song Of The Year (U2's "Beautiful Day"), Best Album Notes (Bob Blumenthal's "Miles Davis & John Coltrane" notes) and—most importantly—Best Polka Album (Jimmy Sturr's "Touched By A Polka").

In two of the remaining three categories, our readers ranked the eventual winner as the second-place finisher. Best New Artist Shelby Lynne received 28% of the vote, falling just below Jill Scott's 35%. And U2's "Beautiful Day" (the actual winner) grabbed 25% of the Record Of The Year Vote, placing second to Madonna's "Music," which grabbed 34%. Maybe that explains the Material Girl's early exit—she had confidence in our accuracy!

But like most everyone else in the industry, our poll participants were surprised by the eventual Album Of The Year winner. Nearly 43% thought Eminem was a lock in the category, and just over 33% thought Radiohead will pull the upset victory. But only 8% voted for the actual winner, Steely Dan. It could have been worse. Had Paul Simon won—as many were predicting—only 6.8% would have been correct, leaving 93% very, very disappointed.

So, what did we learn from all this? I guess we learned that while there may be many things we at HITS don't have a clue about, we sure know our polka.