Monday, February 13, 2012

THIS RECORD WAS INSPIRED BY SOMETHING THAT'S REALLY NORMAL -- A RUBBISH RELATIONSHIP: Last night's Grammy Awards were, all in all, an entertaining mishmosh of genre mashups, worthy tributes, and the kind of overblown disasters one only gets to see at awards shows. Yes, Nicki, thank you for making my Super Bowl halftime prediction ("Nicki Minaj will be weird enough to compel my mom to call me immediately thereafter to ask me who the heck that was") correct, albeit a week late.

The best performances were the simplest: Adele's comeback, Jennifer Hudson's unadorned tribute to Whitney Houston (which was so spot-on vocally that it made one question Whitney's own singularity), and, most surprisingly, Paul McCartney and friends' rocking romp through the end of Abbey Road, the best awards-ending performance I can remember since Pearl Jam and Neil Young closed the 1993 VMAs.  Bullets:

  • Commenter Randy asked the question last night on Twitter, and I don't have a great answer: who's the last artist to have the kind of massive critical and cross-demographic popular acclaim that Adele has now? Best answer I could come up with was Lauryn Hill, but that wasn't as widespread as this.
  • I think my BRUUUCE credentials are sufficiently established that I can state unequivocally that there was no justifiable reason for him to open the show last night. (Heck, it's not like he was nominated this year.) Should've been Jennifer Hudson.
  • Twenty years ago, Nirvana couldn't win a Grammy until after Kurt Cobain had died.  Now, Dave Grohl is the Jose Oquendo of the evening, and the Foo Fighters are so industry-established as to win almost every award for which they were nominated.
  • Chris Brown, ugh.  Double performance, double ugh. Shame on you, NARAS, and this quote makes it worse.
  • It is amazing to have Lady Gaga just sit there for three and a half hours and not have her perform, or win a single award. (Seriously, why was "Born This Way" not the song she pushed for consideration?) 
  • Nice work by LL Cool J as host; he had the difficult job of establishing the right tone for the evening (we are in mourning, but we have permission to celebrate as well), and he pulled it off well. I have been warned, however, not to call it a "comeback".