I want to acknowledge the opinion that this past Sunday provided a watershed moment for indie rock—no, for music in general—giving us the feeling that, as my boy Kanye so eloquently tweeted, “There is hope!!! I feel like we all won when something like this happens!” Yes, we’ve “won.” Arcade Fire won Album of the Year for “The Suburbs.” Indie rock has taken over the world. Officially. Because the Grammys are awesome and relevant. A Grammy award has finally opened the door for…well…

Wait a second.

Let’s get a few things straight. The Grammy Awards don’t really matter. The broadcast itself shows, perhaps, 20 or 25 award presentations of the over 100 awards given out. If anything, the performances matter more. Mumford & Sons, two-time Grammy losers as of Sunday, had a tremendous increase in sales for their year-old album after performing with Bob Dylan—even more than Arcade Fire did for winning Album of the Year. And as much as I dislike Mumford and his (unrelated) boys, I can admit that they performed pretty well Sunday night (not as well as the Avett Brothers, I’ll add, but that’s for another article).

Additionally, the Album of the Year award is one that doesn’t always provide for much longevity. Yeah, Outkast’s “Speakerboxx/The Love Below” was pretty good and gave us a few tracks that stand the test of time. Paul Simon’s “Graceland” is a true classic. But how many of us still listen to Toto’s “Toto IV,” the album that gave us “Africa,” a song most famous today as an a cappella standard? That won Album of the Year for 1982. Or the classic “MTV Unplugged”—no, not Nirvana’s ’94 release, but Tony Bennett’s, which won for 1995. For all the confused Twitter users who wonder “Who the heck is ‘The Suburbs’?”—don’t worry your little Gaga-loving heads. This sure as heck doesn’t mean the Lady Gaga is going anywhere.

I have to admit that it’s pretty cool to see a band I’ve liked since high school get some recognition from the Man. But if I’m supposed to claim that “The Suburbs” is their best album (or the best album of the year), simply because it has the approval of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, I’m defecting.

Regardless of how I feel about the album, though, the fact that it won this award hardly matters. Sure, for Arcade Fire, it’s a great way to reach a new audience, and it’s a tremendous accomplishment for their label, the independent Merge. But in terms of American popular music, it doesn’t mean jack. The Album of the Year doesn’t do much to represent new trends in the industry, and it sure as heck doesn’t portend anything for next year.

Perhaps the handing of this award to Arcade Fire truly represents the merging of mainstream and indie cultures; perhaps it’s just an attention-grabbing move from a notoriously out-of-touch organization. Tell me in 50 years if I’m wrong, but I don’t see this as the watershed moment people are saying it is. We’re pretty ingrained in our ways, and I doubt a little bump in the road will change all that. But that’s also assuming that the Grammys are important. Albums, or Songs, of the Year can’t be determined right away. We listen, we judge and we keep on listening. Time will tell if an album holds up better than any award can. The best music, anyway, is a subjective thing to each of us—in the end, it comes down to our preferences and tastes, no matter what an organization tells us is the best album of the year.