Just Like That

Bonnie Raitt accepts the Song of the Year award during the 65th GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles, California in January 2023. Timothy Norris/FilmMagic. By Andrew ...

But “Just Like That” matters because it tells a unique story from an oft-ignored perspective—and because it’s a flat-out beautiful song that Adele, Taylor Swift, or Beyoncé would be proud to have written. “As we age, nearly all women notice that they become somewhat invisible in the world, but in the golden era of the women’s film, older women really were expected to fade quietly into the wallpaper,” she wrote. Last week, TIME film critic Stephanie Zacharek wrote a piece pegged to the new film 80 For Brady about how the stories of older women have long mattered little to wider culture. It’s entirely possible that many older voters saw her solo name and picked as a rejoinder to a new era of pop songs written by committee. But all of this analysis ignores the quality of the song itself. A vote for Raitt, then, was a vote not just for the song, but for a generation, as well as a non-digital, highly personal approach to music. It has one-sixtieth the number of Spotify streams as the second-least streamed song in the category, DJ Khaled’s “GOD DID.” To many, its victory was a perfect example of the Grammys being out of touch. Raitt was also likely aided by the fact that her connection with the Grammys is long and deep. She serves as a bridge both to an older generation and a younger one. That critique is partly true: the song absolutely benefited from older Grammy voters who look upon music industry changes with contempt and long for the good old days. Raitt’s victory—which came at the expense of pop titans like Beyoncé, Adele, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles—was one of the more notable upsets in recent Grammys history; even Raitt herself was stunned. “Stop giving random people awards challenge,” [wrote one user](https://twitter.com/hotpinkvegas/status/1622446940565782529).