Arcade Fire, the Black Keys, Mumford & Sons Win Big at Grammy Awards
Arcade Fire‘s surprise Album of the Year win at the February 13th Grammy Awards was a major victory for indie rock. The Canadian crew led a wave of triumphant rock acts, including the Black Keys, who collected two trophies, and U.K. folkies Mumford & Sons, who sold 133,000 copies of their debut, Sigh No More, the week after the show – a 169 percent increase. The broadcast, for which ratings hit a 10-year high of 26.6 million viewers, drove artists from Lady Antebellum to the Avett Brothers up the charts. “From a turning-people-on-to-new-music perspective, the Grammy show format is really working,” says Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon.com.
This story is from the December March 17th, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.