Time Is on Their Side

Carlos Santana has already received enough congratulations for his expected victories tonight in the Grammy Awards, so let’s look ahead to future best album winners.

Congratulations to the Rolling Stones and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

And Ice Cube.

And Sinead O’Connor.

And Beck.

Well, why not? If ‘60s legends Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Santana can win best album Grammys for their work in the ‘90s, why can’t the Stones and the ‘80s and ‘90s standouts named above win them in the coming decades?

There’s every reason to suspect some of them will, because the Grammy voters shop, at least in part, by brand name.

What other choice do they have when there are nearly 900 entries in the best album category alone each year?

Think about it.

At an average of an hour per album, you’d have to devote almost 112 workdays, or 22 full workweeks, to listen to them all even a single time.

Want to give a second spin to even 10% of the albums? Better cancel that two-week vacation.

And that’s just one category.

So obviously none of the 10,000 Grammy voters listens to all the eligible recordings.

I spend 52 weeks a year listening to and writing about pop music, and I haven’t even heard of 400 of the albums.

That’s why the artist’s name is important. If you can’t actually listen to the albums, you can at least spot some names you can trust, right?

New artists sometimes get enough mainstream attention to catch the ears of Grammy voters and win a best album award--as Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” did in 1998.

But either uncertain about or unaware of some of the newer, cutting-edge forces, voters in the ‘90s generally went for veterans. In this year’s balloting, for instance, the year’s most acclaimed collection, Moby’s “Play,” was ignored in the best album field while being named only in the “alternative music” category--just like Beck’s equally deserving “Odelay” in 1996.

Here are some artists who might well catch Grammy voters’ eyes over the next few years--great artists who deserved but never received a best album Grammy.

The Rolling Stones: Grammy voters are so slow to pick up on greatness that they awarded Dylan a lifetime achievement award before giving him a top Grammy.

Of the more than a dozen lifetime achievement winners who haven’t won a best album Grammy, the Stones are the most likely to give us a competitive work in the future. The group’s recent albums have been uninspired, but they continue to put together winning live shows and they probably have one more solid album in them.

Besides, Mick Jagger is as sharp as they come, and he can see what the teaming with Arista Records founder Clive Davis did to revive Santana’s career. So Jagger couldteam up with his old friend, Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, and the Grammy voters will fall all over themselves in their eagerness to pay tribute to the Stones and to one of the industry’s most beloved executives. Besides, who could resist the prospect of a Keith Richards acceptance speech? Pencil it in for 2003, which would coincide with the Stones’ next farewell tour.

Al Green: Another way Grammy voters make up for ignoring worthy artists the first time around is to catch them on the gospel rebound. Elvis Presley never won a Grammy for “Don’t Be Cruel” or “Jailhouse Rock,” but he won three for gospel recordings.

Green didn’t win any for “Tired of Being Alone” or any of the other extraordinary ‘70s recordings that established him as one of the great soul singers of all time. But once he turned to gospel in the ‘80s, Grammy voters honored him so often (eight times in 10 years) that they should have renamed the award after him.

Imagine how excited the voters would be if Green could get multi-Grammy winners Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder to co-produce a secular album for him. You could probably get all the necessary contracts worked out by 2005.

Prince: Note the first step: Get rid of the stupid Artist Formerly Known As tag. Voters need to be reminded about the musician who gave us “Controversy” and “Purple Rain,” not the one who came up with “Crystal Ball” and “Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic.” Secondly, Prince must also take Santana’s lead and be open to collaborators who can reintroduce him to younger fans. How old will Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera be by 2010?

Ice Cube: With Dr. Dre and Eazy-E in N.W.A in the ‘80s, Ice Cube defined the commercial and creative boundaries of rap. The industry pros hated gangsta rap at the time, but Cube will be such a titan in movies, music and television by the end of the decade that voters will feel comfortable with him. Dre will produce the album, which will be the soundtrack for Cube’s remake of his favorite gangsta film, “Serpico.” Count on it in 2012.

Sinead O’Connor: Artists ranging from Alanis Morissette and Courtney Love to Polly Jean Harvey owe the Irish singer-songwriter a debt, and they’ll get a chance to repay it in a live concert to raise money for the abused-children shelter that O’Connor, now a priest in the Latin Tridentine Church, will open at some point. Grammy voters love benefit packages. “The Concert for Bangla Desh” was named best album in 1972 and “We Are the World” was declared best record in 1985. Following the Green model, she’ll win a Grammy for a gospel recording in 2010, setting up the benefit collection to win best album in 2015.

Beck and Moby: As pop music gets more tied to the Internet, the chances are the number of releases will increase dramatically. With every would-be musician in the country able to put an album on a Web site, the number of eligible Grammy albums may shoot from 900 to, say, 2.3 million by 2010. That’s going to make brand names all the more important. Even titles will become a key tool in attracting voters’ attention.

Beck and Moby are both such innovators that they could probably get best album Grammys on their own someday, but think of the synergy in a joint work. And this ultimate title will catch voters’ eye: “Don’t Get Fooled Again: These Are the Guys Who Deserved the Grammys Back in the 1990s.” A natural in 2020.

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.