techraptor.net
Joseph Allen
If you’ve been waiting for video game music to get acknowledged at the Grammys, you need wait no longer. Last night, the first Grammy for a video game score was handed to the composer for the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla expansion Dawn of Ragnarok.
Composer Stephanie Economou took to the stage to accept the award for the DLC. Economou thanked Ubisoft and music supervisor Simon Landry for “inviting me into the rich, rich legacy of Assassin’s Creed“, as well as the other musicians involved in Dawn of Ragnarok‘s score (with a surprise shout-out to prog-folk-metal outfit Wilderun), and, of course, her family. You can see Economou accepting the Grammy here.
Finally, Economou thanks “all of the people who fought tirelessly” to get video game music recognized at the Grammys. She says the award is for those people, who have helped to acknowledge and validate the power of game music. It’s hard to disagree with that; video game music can be powerful indeed, and it’s nice to see the Grammys recognize that.
Of course, this isn’t the first time a piece of video game music has been awarded a Grammy. At last year’s ceremony, The 8-Bit Big Band’s arrangement of “Meta Knight’s Revenge” from Kirby’s Super Star took home the “Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Capella” award, but that’s not a gaming-specific trophy. There was also Journey‘s nomination for “Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media” in 2013, although again, that wasn’t a gaming-specific award.
Economou had some pretty tough competition, too. She was up against Austin Wintory’s score for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, as well as the scores for Call of Duty: Vanguard, Old World, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Here’s hoping that the Grammys continue this category into the future; it’s hard to imagine a world where the tireless work of game composers doesn’t get the credit it deserves from the mainstream music industry. Watch this space for more info.