The 65th Grammy Awards marked another incredible milestone for the video game industry with the debut of its newest category “Best Score Soundtrack For Video Games/Interactive Media”. Prior to the new category, music from video games was eligible within the event’s score category, with Civilization IV holding the first Grammy win for video games in 2011. Now, within its very own category, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla took home the award.
Accepting the award was Stephanie Economou, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s composer. According to Variety, Economou has been rising up within the entertainment music world, with her work in the Netflix series “Jupiter’s Legacy” and other past musical contributions in films like The Martian, Mulan and Catch-22.
Economou winning the first ever award for this new Grammy category was undoubtedly a momentous occasion. It was made even more memorable by the category’s unintentionally hilarious award presenter, comedian Randy Rainbow, The reactions to the comedian fumbling Valhalla’s name was expected, with many posting their reactions on Twitter of the comedian’s blunder. Regardless, most got a good laugh out of the situation and moved on. That couldn’t be said the same for Rainbow, who posted a response expressing his sincere apologies for messing up.
“Yes, I totally had a Travolta/Adel Dazeem moment at the Grammys,” said Rainbow. “It was the second category of the show, I was still finding my footing and don’t know video games. And of the many phonetic spellings I had to contend with as host, that one wasn’t included so I just started speaking in tongues.”
“If it’s any consolation, when my nominated category was called, they accidentally pronounced my name “Dave Chappelle”.
The nominees for the award other than Economou were game composers Austin Wintory for Aliens: Fireteam Elite , Bear McCreary for Call of Duty: Vanguard, Richard Jacques for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Christopher Tin for Old World.