My best friend in high school and I had a deal: When he got nominated for a Grammy, I’d be his date. He was a percussionist who bounced around from pop-punk to hardcore to bluegrass bands. He knew he had talent, but every time a lead singer walked out or a record deal fell through, I’d jokingly remind him that I still had a Grammy dress in my closet.

In time, I lost interest in the Grammys and in the relationship. In an age where we can go online to check award status in real-time or who wore what days later, and when late-night drives get replaced by e-mails and IMs, we fall out of touch with what we thought was the center of the music world or our high school world.

The Grammys sneak up on us in the wake of the Super Bowl every winter, and without the advantages of team spirit, fresh commercials and obsessive eating and drinking contests, the Grammys can’t hold a candle. Awards shows are suffering: The writers’ strike shut down the Golden Globes and is presenting challenges to the upcoming Academy Awards. MTV’s Video Music Awards delivered less-than-stellar performances this past fall, when the Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado and Timbaland closer left me puzzled and annoyed because it left out the spring ’07 hit “Give It to Me” in the final lineup.

I increasingly seem to be getting off my couch post-award show craving some depression-conquering chocolate and the last three hours of my life back. And don’t get me started on Joan Rivers.

But last Sunday’s Grammy Awards managed to make headlines: some for Amy Winehouse’s five-win sweep and some for Herbie Hancock’s underdog triumph for Album of the Year. Even Carrie Underwood, Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys found room in the spotlight alongside Kanye West and his four new statuettes.

Yet the real newsmaker is presidential candidate Barack Obama. Obama won his second Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album, this time for The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

Though I haven’t heard the album in its entirety, I have no trouble believing that the six-hour vocal and instrumental production struck a chord with the awards committee. I remember streaming Obama’s victory speech from this winter’s Iowa caucus online as chills ran down my spine. Six hours of that? I’m game.

In the wake of a massive primary sweep, the media seems eager to peg Obama’s Grammy as another triumph over the Clinton clan. This year, Obama defeated Bill Clinton’s Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World as well as a submission by former president Jimmy Carter.

Obama’s first win came two years ago for Dreams From My Father. Bill Clinton has won twice, and Hillary won in 1997 for It Takes a Village. Forgotten by the nominating committee was another ’08 hopeful: Stephen Colbert, whose audiobook I Am America (And So Can You!) rests behind Obama’s at number two on iTunes’s most popular nonfiction audiobooks.

With a shiny new Grammy award, a roller coaster ride full of primary wins and a handful of trendy Facebook fan groups under his belt (Barackaholics Obamanous?), I’m hoping that Obama can breathe life back into the Grammy awards like he’s done on the political front for scores of young voters.

Why? Because I haven’t given up on any of it — music, politics or the Grammy dress in my closet.

Erin Delmore is a senior in the College. She can be reached at delmore@thehoya.com. The Rules of 8-track-tion appears every other Friday in The Guide.