As a fictional singer-songwriter who once pissed his fictional pants at a fictional Grammy ceremony, he once sang, via real-life composer Jason Isbell, “Maybe it’s time to let the old habits die.” And, like, it really is. The 2021 Grammy broadcast was now ready to be reinvented, with producer Ken Ehrlich stepping down after a decades-long mandate. How Covid-19 forced a deeper rethink, and Late Late Show with James Corden Ben Winston took over the production, along with longtime BET Awards producer Jesse Collins (who also worked on Weeknd’s successful Super Bowl performance), last night was an unprecedented chance for a complete reset.
For the most part, it worked incredibly well – but only as a broadcast. Grammy as a TV show has always been better and more inclusive than the often disastrous nomination and award process (from which the creators of the TV show have always been separated, a point that is understandably difficult to convey to artists and fans). That disconnect was stronger than ever this year, and fixing a Recording Academy that never gave Beyoncé their Album of the Year trophy is going to be much more difficult than earning some wildly fun hours of TV. Some reflections on the performances:
Harry Styles is really good at that, and by that I mean everything. Everyone of a certain age who is still trying to locate 21st century rock stars should, of course, look at hip-hop first. But another answer was there in a green feather boa, delivering the most ostentatious and most charismatic opening act of a guy in tight black leather since Elvis Presley sang “Trouble” on his 68th comeback special. And Elvis didn’t there was Dev Hynes on the bass.
Haim left a good impression. The LA sisters are anything but new, but they understood that they were playing for the biggest audience of their entire career, which, judging by social media, included a surprising number of people who had never heard of them. They brought it all in, casually switching instruments while playing one of their best and deepest Los Angeles songs, “The Steps”, which presents an attractive proposition: what if Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks were not just collaborators, but the same person ? (And it also split into three sisters.)
How did they launch DaBaby’s performance on “Rockstar”? “DaBaby will conduct an orchestra while Roddy Rich does his part, and the back-ups will be a scary female version of the Supreme Court singing a tribute to ‘Duel of the Fates’ The phantom threat punctuation – trust us, will it be great? ”(It was, in fact, great.)
I, for example, greet our new British pop sovereign. Just compare Dua Lipa’s command performance with your initial attempt Saturday Night Live in 2018, and you’ll see a pop star who used his quarantined time to prepare to take over the world. The hypnotic visuals at the beginning of her performance suggested that she was attracting us to some new esoteric religion of her own creation – duanetic, perhaps – with millions, no doubt, ready to sign up.
Bruno Mars should have been full Wandavision, It is made all the decades. First came his performance with Anderson .Paak as Silk Sonic, who was absolutely mysterious in his invocation of 70’s vocal group R&B (measured against the precision standards of this duo, sound by Greta Van Fleet nothing like Led Zeppelin). Then Bruno appeared again with a fantastic vision of Little Richard in the In Memoriam segment, going back to the fifties. But that left entire parts of the 20th century untouched. A shocking oversight, but there is always the next year.
Taylor Swift may be heading for the mystic. So her team probably didn’t plant an entire forest somewhere 30 years ago just to get her ready for Taylor’s master medley cottagecore-meet-woodnymphcore scam – but you can be positive didn’t they? Set in what looked a little bit like another version of Long Pond Studio, and embellished with a few Stevie Nicks-onian twists (Stevie was the unofficial grandma godmother last night), the fairytale air of the performance suggested yet another new direction for the big winner of the night. (There may be a portal to Upside Down behind this mall.)
Mickey Guyton’s performance was a true cultural reconfiguration. The first solo black woman in country music to perform at the Grammy gave one of the best performances of the night with the brilliantly hard-hitting “Black Like Me”, which uses the radio’s lyrical and musical tropes of the radio to convey a message that the format apparently it is not. I am ready to convey: “If you think we live in the land of the free / You should try to be black like me.”
Lionel Richie singing his version of “Lady” by Kenny Rogers was the oldest Grammy moment of the night. It was possibly a strange choice to pay homage to Rogers, of all the lost musicians of the past year, in an extravagant way. On the other hand, it was nice to see at least one musician over 50 years old performing, proof that the Grammy can embrace youth without being exhausted. Logan’s Race.
Brandi Carlile, run us over with an excavator. Carlile’s performance in John Prine’s “I Remember Everything”, delivered with seemingly effortless seriousness, was the most devastating emotional neutron bomb of the night.
Megan Thee Stallion put TikTok back in its place. Few artists are better than Megan at making songs that function as fragmented “sounds” within the TikTok universe, generating challenges and dances and other things from Generation Z that can dominate the app. But his real medley was a reminder of who actually owns these songs, and that their true impact comes only when all the sound pieces are reassembled.
Cardi B and Megan told the story, shouting “WAP”. Nothing could make aspiring cultural police officers like Ben Shapiro seem less than the cheerful good humor of that performance. In fact, if you look closely, poor Ben was trapped inside the giant boot’s lucite heel.
Don’t try to surprise Beyoncé. The slight caution with which Beyoncé seemed to welcome Trevor Noah’s announcement that she had tied Alison Krauss to a Grammy record said everything about generations of understandable Grammy suspicion.
Are we sure this was all Post Malone’s performance? Something cool – fire? a complete band? – seemed perpetually about to happen during Posty’s Ozz-play performance on “Hollywood’s Bleeding”. Instead, everything felt like an introduction to nothing for the duration of a song.
BTS should have opened or closed the show. No act had more energy or joy in the show than BTS, who practically moved across the ocean to LA by sheer willpower, and provided the most visually stunning moment of the night, when they showed their panoramic view of Seoul. Placing them in the penultimate position seemed like a small insult (as well as indicating them only once, but that is another story).
Artists and stars hardly died. “I think we’re seeing the artist’s death,” said Lucas Keller, CEO and founder of Milk & Honey, a company that works with composers and producers recently. Outside magazine. In the era of streaming, he suggested, fans just want their playlists and don’t care much about who is releasing content to fill them. The whole show last night was a powerful rebuke to that idea: the power of the stars on display, from Bad Bunny to Lil Baby, from Doja Cat to Billie Eilish, suggested that it takes more charisma and distinction than ever to reach the top. of an industry flooded with product. See how unforgettable Lizzo’s presence was, and she was just handing out a prize. Go ahead and try to tell her that she is just a provider of anonymous content.