Best: I mean… Beyonce
Where do we begin? Beyonce delivered a knockout performance that may have surpassed her epic 15 min turn during the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. It began with a projected video that depicted her as an iconic matriarch (baby stomach uncovered) alongside her own mother and her daughter where her voice could be heard saying “You look nothing like your mother. You look everything like your mother.” She eventually appeared with at least 20 female dancers as she sang “Love Drought” and reclined magically back in a chair without falling over. The transition found her saying — in another voice over — “We’re gonna heal. We’re gonna start again.” She then flowed into “Sandcastles.” She ended saying “If we’re gonna heal. Let it be glorious.” It was beautiful, haunting and subtly and overtly political. Just like her album. The one that somehow didn’t win Album of the Year. Maybe that’s OK though at this point Beyonce seems like she’s gunning for her own permanent wing in the Museum of Modern Art over any more Grammy Awards.
https://twitter.com/gIowshawty/status/831026549151379456
Best and Worst: Adele restarts ‘Fastlove’
A little torn on this one. Adele sounded fantastic after she re-started an admittedly beautiful rendition of “Fastlove” as the surprise performer of the show’s hyped George Michael tribute. She gagged the audience saying “I can’t do this again like last year” and swore before starting over (there were sound issues during her performance the previous year she was criticized for in the press). The main problem was Hans Zimmer’s arrangement of the song made it more difficult to sing that it should have been and it was a horrible choice of a song to take in such a melancholy direction. “Fastlove” was Michael’s song about embracing his sexuality and hook up culture, a life he was incredibly comfortable with even if his old (straight) friends own lives were going in decidedly different directions (“My friends got their ladies they are all having babies, I just wanna have some fun”). Having a gay icon like Adele sing it was on point, but she shouldn’t have been singing this arrangement. No one should have.
https://twitter.com/MusicNewsRumors/status/831029390158995456
Best: Bruno Mars leads a stellar Prince Tribute
First, Morris Day and the Time still got it (and how about Beyonce knowing the words to “Jungle Love”?). Second, Bruno Mars had big shoes to fill in that cover of “Let’s Go Crazy” and he [expletive] blew it out of the arena. And that guitar solo. Damn.
A tribute fit for a Prince thxs @BrunoMars https://t.co/0PS6UdRPQU
— Loni Love (@LoniLove) February 13, 2017
Best: Politics were served in unexpected ways.
Hollywood has no intention of keeping quiet over an administration a good 90% of them didn’t vote for, especially after Trump’s actions over the past three weeks. Jennifer Lopez had something to say, Paris Jackson (a slightly under-hyped appearance by Michael Jackson’s daughter by the way) threw out a “No NAPL” message and Laverne Cox asked viewers and the audience to look up the hashtag #StandWithGavin. Even the President of the Recording Academy, Neil Portnow, had one of he orchestra’s musicians play “America the Beautiful” before he went on a speech asking for unity but also telling Congress and the White House not to abandon arts funding. And we didn’t even get to Katy Perry or A Tribe Called Quest yet…
Best: Katy Perry, amazing production design and “persist”
Katy Perry and her conceptual designer (who that is I’d love to know) had the unfortunate fate of following Beyonce, but luckily there was a good 20 minutes breather in-between both numbers. The fact is if Beyonce had not appeared it would be Perry’s impressive performance people would be buzzing about (and many still are). Perry sang her new subtly political track “Chained to the Rhythm” appearing in a “home” set on stage that slowly rotated to the audience (and also wearing a “persist” arm band). Eventually a fence disappeared and Skip Marley popped up to sing his rap verse. Then — out of the blue — the entire home falls apart because it had been held up by dancers. They then formed a wall behind Perry where the words “We the People” appeared. Incredible.
https://twitter.com/MusicNewsRumors/status/831025336200597508
Best: A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and “President Agent Orange”
A Tribe Called Quest and Anderson Paak had more than won over the Grammy audience and then Busta Rhymes appeared and made. A. Statement. “I just wanna thank President Agent Orange for perpetuating all the evil you have been perpetuating throughout the United States. I want to thank President Agent Orange for his unsuccessful attempt at the Muslim Ban. When we come together.” And at that point a wall is broken and people of different ethnicities and religions walked to the fill the stage and the group shouted “We the people! We the people!” “Resist! Resist! Resist!” Spectacular.
https://twitter.com/ryu4747/status/830993499860332544
Worst: Grammys shafting Beyonce in top three categories
Many people were angry at the end of this year’s telecast Adele, a beloved figure to many, swept the three major categories, Record of the Year (“Hello”), Song of the Year (“Hello”) and Album of the Year (“25”). The problem of course, was that Beyonce’s landmark album “Lemonade” lost out in the latter, Grammy’s biggest honor. Adele was shaken by the win and almost immediately began apologizing to her idol and it looked like Beyonce was moved by her words. Adele said, “The artist of my life is Beyonce and this album to me, the ‘Lemonade’ album is just so monumental beyond so monumental and so well thought out and so daring and we all got to see another side to you you don’t always let us see and we appreciate that. We adore you. You are our light and the way you make me and my friends feel and the way you make my black friends feel is empowering and you make them stand up for themselves and I love you and I always have.” Backstage Adele told reporters she’d voted for Beyonce and was upset she didn’t win. The Recording Academy is now also looking at a situation where over the past decade Taylor Swift and Adele have both won two Albums of the Year and neither of Beyonce’s last two critically acclaimed and blockbuster albums broke through. Is it #GrammysSoWhite? That might be a stretch considering the representation of People of Color in other categories, but something is off that’s for sure.
.@Adele gives @Beyonce a major shoutout during her acceptance speech for Album of the Year at the #GRAMMYs https://t.co/N6td5Qk9oS pic.twitter.com/yIG8B2D7Us
— CNN (@CNN) February 13, 2017
