Bad news. It’s Grammy season again.

The Grammys are, famously, awful. Nobody who votes for them seems to listen to let alone enjoy music. They’re mostly handed out to the oldest, lamest option, or failing that, the white person the elderly voters have heard of. It’s bad and I hate it.

That said, our esteemed editor Roman Gokhman proposed a column about the Grammy nominations, and the much more talented Tony Hicks said no, so here I am.

The plan is this: I’m going to pick five categories and decide on a winner. Then you can ignore the actual dumb ceremony where they give it to ABBA. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, ABBA is nominated.

Record of the Year: Lizzo — “About Damn Time”

The other nominees are: ABBA, “Don’t Shut Me Down;” Adele, “Easy On Me;” Beyonce, “BREAK MY SOUL;” Mary J. Blige, “Good Morning Gorgeous;” Brandi Carlile featuring Lucius, “You And Me On The Rock;” Doja Cat, “Woman;” Steve Lacy, “Bad Habit;” Kendrick Lamar, “The Heart Part 5” and Harry Styles, “As It Was.”

Once I saw Lizzo on the list, I knew she was going to win but, for the sake of fairness, I listened to all 350 nominees in this category. The ABBA song sounds like the group thought it was hired to score a Disney movie from the late ’90s, Steve Lacy is pretty good for someone I hadn’t previously heard of, Mary J. Blige sounds the same as the last time you heard any of her stuff, and the rest of the songs you probably know already.

That said: Lizzo. She’s so good! You can’t not let her win.

[Gokhman note: Let’s make this interesting. I, for one, do find the Grammys interesting. Most of the nominees are worthy, and the voting process as a whole is like studying the movement of wildebeests in Africa. It’s culturally significant! So I’ll make my own picks in these categories. For this one, I’ll go with Harry Styles, though Steve Lacy could be a surprise. For Willis’ benefit, Lacy is from The Internet.]

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Best Pop Duo/Group Performance: Coldplay and BTS — “My Universe”

I skipped Song of the Year because I don’t understand how that’s different than Record of the Year and I don’t care, and I skipped Best Pop Solo Performance because it’s Lizzo again. The other nominees in this one are ABBA again, “Bam Bam” by Camila Cabello and Ed Sheeran, “I Like You (A Happier Song)” by Post Malone and Doja Cat, and “Unholy” by Sam Smith and Kim Petras.

Let’s be clear: Coldplay isn’t very good. This group is very boring. I appreciate that it was listed as pop rather than rock, because few bands rock less than Coldplay. And this is not, in a vacuum, a great song. But BTS makes even Coldplay seem cool and it’s super catchy, so I respect it. I have a dislike of pop music generally, but this isn’t terrible, and the video is old school over-the-top with the production values which I respect.

Gokhman vote: “Unholy.” It’s by far the best song of the bunch. There’s not any other strong competition, however, and because of that, this is one that could go to ABBA.

Best Rock Performance: Turnstile — “HOLIDAY”

The other nominees are Bryan Adams for “So Happy It Hurts,” Beck for “Old Man,” The Black Keys for “Wild Child,” Brandi Carlile for “Broken Horses,” and Ozzy Osbourne and Jeff Beck for “Patient Number 9.”

The Beck song is prescient because the average age of these artists is probably in the 50s. I love Ozzy and Beck as much as anyone but come on. Rock really is on its way to being like jazz, a niche genre people mostly like out of nostalgia. The young bands are Turnstile, formed in 2010 and IDLES, from 2009, so I decided to choose one of them rather than succumb to the genre gerontocracy.

Of the two, Turnstile struck my fancy more. So they win. Sorry, everyone else. (Especially sorry to Brandi Carlile, who’s amazing, but she started in 2004 which is, you know, almost 20 years ago. Still old.)

Gokhman vote: San Francisco Giants Manager Gabe Kapler’s favorite Turnstile. But I’m presuming the actual Grammy voters will give this one to the Black Keys, Beck or Ozzy. Historically, the better-established artists have beat out the better younger artists in this category.

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Best Metal Performance: Ghost — “Call Me Little Sunshine”

The other nominees are Megadeth with “We’ll Be Back,” Muse with “Kill Or Be Killed,” Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi with “Degradation Rules” and Turnstile, again, with “Blackout.” Good choices all around!

I talk a lot of trash about the Grammys, because they earned it because they’re bad, but one good thing they did was introduce me to Ghost. I first heard of them when they won this very award for “Circe” in 2016 and I became quite the fan. Prequelle was even better and Impera, the album this is from, is a lateral move but still amazing. And this song has seriously grown on me since I first heard it. So they win to introduce anyone who’s not already on the bandwagon to the band.

Gokhman vote: Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi. Willis knows metal better than me, but I don’t see Ozzy losing in what could be his last nomination for a new release. Muse is too proggy for this category. Turnstile could take it, too, if the band doesn’t get an award in the rock category.

Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album: White Sun — Mystic Mirror

Oh, you think I’m messing around? You think I didn’t spend a work day listening to five New Age, Ambient, or Chant albums so I could pick my favorite?! Well you would be wrong and a fool because that’s exactly what I did.

I talk up the culturally omnipresent Lizzo and joke about rock fading away even though you probably know most of the bands, but the other categories deeper down the list are also full of artists at the top of their game and deserve just as much respect. Fantastic Negrito, for example, won Best Contemporary Blues Album three times and he’s easily one of my favorite musicians. So I wanted to pick an under-appreciated category and give it some love.

That said, I am not an expert on the genre. Paul Avgerinos’s Joy, for example, sounded to me like the idyllic establishing shot music of an elven village from the first act of a fantasy movie, and that’s awesome. Big fan of that. Cheryl B. Engelhardt’s The Passenger was by a wide margin the most tranquil, but I’m not good with tranquility so it almost wrapped back around and made me anxious by being too chill. Don’t try to understand by brain. Mantra Americana by Madi Das, Dave Stringer and Bhakti Without Borders was a very close second and the only one that I thought could be reasonably considered a chant. Will Ackerman’s Positano Songs would be the best possible meditation music to the point I think that had to be his intent.

The winner, though? White Sun with Mystic Mirror, which has the most edge to it without straying from the prompt. I enjoyed the album even if it’s a bit more downtempo than my usual fare. It feels a little like video game music in the best way. (Which is its own category this year! It’s about time, “Baba Yetu” from “Civilization IV” won a Grammy over a decade ago.)

Gokhman vote: The Bay Area’s Laura Sullivan didn’t release an album this year. Bummer. I didn’t listen to any of these, sorry.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.