Music’s biggest night began early in the afternoon in L.A., with the Grammys “pre-telecast,” which started at 1 P.M. Actually, the hoopla began a good deal earlier, with the many parties that management companies, labels, magazines, and brands held around town in the days leading up to the event. Coveted invitations included the Red Light Management soirèe, at the Skybar, atop the Mondrian Hotel; the Beats Music launch, at the Belasco Theatre; the Friends ’n Family party, at the Park Plaza Hotel; and Clive Davis’s gala, at the Beverly Hilton, which I wrote about in the magazine this week. These affairs, combined with the ceaseless radio and TV reportage and with the ubiquitous Grammys chitchat, made me realize just how much of this town’s identity, as well as its livelihood, is built on the fragile butterfly wings of song.
The “pre,” as it is know, which takes place in the Nokia Theatre, is a mirror image of the prime-time event, held in the adjacent Staples Center. Here, the awards categories, seventy-two altogether, vastly outnumber the performances (a mere five). The big rap awards are announced; Macklemore & Ryan Lewis swept all of them, which has presented hip-hop with an occasion for soul searching. The “pre” also gives out the award for Best Rock Album, in which, weirdly, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, and Neil Young and Crazy Horse were all nominated, underlining, as if any more emphasis were needed, the sorry lack of new rock artists doing Grammy-worthy album-length work today.
When the nominees for Best Rock Performance were announced, the woman next to me let out a passionate yelp for Imagine Dragons, an enthusiasm belied by her age—she was well into her middle years—and by her formal ankle-length gown. She turned to me and said, “I’m sorry,” to which I replied, “It’s O.K., I like them, too.” She said, “Yes, but Dan’s my son,” referring to Dan Reynolds, the front man. When Cyndi Lauper read the winner—Imagine Dragons!—Dan’s mom lost control. It was lovely.
There were lots of lovely moments in the “pre.” The bare-bones nature of the ceremony puts you closer to the passion that went into making the music. The Del McCoury Band won for Best Bluegrass Album, and seeing Del up there with his two sons, Ronnie and Rob, who travel the country playing with him, was moving. Ben Harper won for Best Blues Album, for “Get Up!,” and before the award he performed with the harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite; they played maybe the best music I heard all night. (They were aided by the crack house band.) Accepting the award, Harper talked about how his grandmother, who would have been ninety-four this year, had played him Charlie Musselwhite records when he was little, inspiring his chosen path. When Harper closed his speech with “Long live the blues!,” I wanted to pump my fist.
The “pre” ended at four, giving the crowd a chance to nosh at the Staples Center concessions stands—never have I seen so many people in black tie waiting in line at a McDonald’s counter—and to hunt around for outlets to charge their phones before the main event began, at five. Perhaps because Grammy anticipation had been running so high all week, the show seemed to start off flat, as if no one could quite believe that the awards were finally under way. Beyoncé and Jay Z’s “Drunk in Love,” sexy as it was, should have come later. Lorde’s twitchy, eccentric performance of “Royals” was underwhelming—no doubt she’s only trying to keep herself interested, but this was an occasion for doing the song straight. Katy Perry chose “Dark Horse,” over “Roar,” which in my view was a mistake. And even “Blurred Lines,” which had stopped the show the night before, at Clive Davis’s party, didn’t get the crowd on its feet; pairing Robin Thicke with Chicago didn’t work. I found myself checking the Twitter parody account Dr. Jill Biden, a reliable source of acerbic awards-show tweets:
Robin Thicke is about to give all of Chicago herpes. #GRAMMYs
But then Taylor Swift lit a fire with her measured but passionate performance of “All Too Well.” She was followed by Pink, who swung above the crowd on a wire, singing, or maybe energetically pantomiming, "Try"—it’s hard to believe she could belt out that powerfully while hanging upside down—before touching down and doing a killer duet of “Just Give Me a Reason” with Nate Ruess. Not long after that came a Kendrick Lamar-Imagine Dragons mashup of “Radioactive,” which was the best of the executive producer Ken Ehrlich’s counterintuitive pairings. After some inspired rapping by Lamar, the song came back to the chorus: “I’m waking up / I feel it in my bones / Enough to make my systems blow / Welcome to the new age, to the new age.” It was the first purely electric moment of the evening. Somewhere in the audience, a mom must have been very proud.
This was my first time attending the Grammys; after watching it on TV for years, I thought that, being in the hall, I would catch all the shimmering production values that I’d been missing at home, and that the stagecraft would carry the day. But, when you see the show live, the music is more important than ever, and the stagecraft seems like it’s for the folks at home. There were some jaw-dropping production numbers, like the one in which several dozen couples got married onstage while Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performed “Same Love,” but, for me, hearing Nile Rodgers switch from his “Get Lucky” guitar riff to “Good Times” was pure magic. Seeing Willie Nelson performing with Kris Kristofferson, Blake Shelton, and Merle Haggard was sublime, and Haggard’s snippet of “Okie from Muskogee” reminded everyone of what makes a song great—it expresses a point of view, even if you don’t agree with it. Despite the Grammys’ hasty coronation of the very un-Okie Kacey Musgraves as the new queen of country (maybe too fast for the girl’s own good?), old Merle still commands a lot of stage.
The evening ended, improbably, with Paul Williams accepting the award for Album of the Year on behalf of Daft Punk, giving voice to the silent helmeted producers while working in a pitch for sobriety. In addition to being music’s biggest night, it certainly felt like one of the longest—and Universal’s Ace Hotel after-party was still to come.
Above: Lorde. Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty.
