Kirby has become Nintendo’s first Grammy Award winner

Eat the Music

In an odd but fun little headline, beloved bottomless pit Kirby has bagged himself an official Grammy Award, becoming the first Nintendo character to do so. The pink puffball picked up the gong at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, which was held Sunday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

Strictly speaking, the award was won by the talented duo of Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman, who were nominated in the “Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella” category. The winning tune was the big band composition of the Jun Ishikawa theme “Meta Knight’s Revenge,” which appears in the 1996 SNES release Kirby Super Star.

You can check out the winning track, as performed by The 8-bit Big Band, below. PARP!

Rosen and Silverman, who are well-known for the jazz and big band covers of famous video game themes, were understandably over-the-moon with the Grammy win, failing to hide their excitement in an announcement on social media.

“HOLY SHIT WE WON THE GRAMMY!! LONG LIVE VIDEO GAME MUSIC!!” wrote the duo on Twitter. “Thanks to everybody who’s ever listened to [the8bitbigband], ALL of (the) artists who have contributed their time/talent and of course HUGE thanks to my co-arranger the one and only Button_Masher!! MUCH LOVE!”

The 8-bit Band rendition of “Meta Knight’s Revenge” is only the second piece of video game music to win a Grammy Award. Back in 2010, composer Christopher Tin won “Best Instrumental Arrangement with Vocalist” for the track “Baba Yetu,” which appeared in strategy epic Civilization 4. A few years later, Journey composer Austin Wintory was nominated in the “Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media”  category, a surely deserving nomination that unfortunately failed to score the win.

I guess the only question that remains is who truly won the Grammy, Kirby or Meta Knight?

Maybe we have the dramatic crux of the next Kirby release lying right underneath our noses.

Chris Moyse

Senior Editor – Chris has been playing video games since the 1980s. Former Saturday Night Slam Master. Graduated from Galaxy High with honors. Twitter: @ChrisxMoyse