There was little to redeem the 54th Grammy Awards. As most predicted, Adele won all six Grammys she was nominated for, including Record and Album of the Year. Considering that the Grammys are largely an advertisement for the music industry, it would have been unthinkable to overlook the woman who has sold more records than anyone in the last year by a margin of several million. It doesn’t hurt that Adele is an apt hero—enormously talented, not rail thin, recently returned from vocal-cord surgery, and believably moved when collecting the trophies she must have known she would win. This was the best thing about the night: a gifted musician getting her due, even if her recordings are not yet as impressive as her instrument. She knocked “Rolling in the Deep” out of the park and said “snot” in her acceptance speech. Love it. But read no further if you need to believe in unicorns and platinum rainbows.
Before the telecast even began, several key things happened. Kanye West won the four awards he was nominated for, all variations within the Rap category. If we’re imagining—pure speculation here, folks—that the awards are not doled out purely on the basis of aggregated votes and are possibly (speculation!) jiggered around to serve various constituencies, then it might have been necessary to give Kanye all the rap awards in sight, since his exquisite album “My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy” was not given a Best Album nomination. Much as we’re rooting for Adele, her modest, solid album “21” was in no way equal to West’s combination of patient craft and impatient, airy visions. So, to forestall a showdown and give Adele the awards she is due (according to the implicit laws of NARAS), West was conveniently excluded. With West removed, the Grammys were able to make room for the night’s most puzzling and persistent guest, Foo Fighters, who released an album called “Wasting Light” in 2011, which the band, and almost nobody else, thought deserved an Album of the Year nomination. West, perhaps taking the high road or simply practicing realpolitik, didn’t bother to attend.
Skrillex won three awards, and used the word “crazy” in his acceptance speeches as much as other winners used the word “God.” Dubstep is apparently more important to the Grammys than several things, including a singer named Whitney Houston, who died Saturday night. I’m being only slightly facetious here—obviously short notice makes it hard to do justice to a talent like Houston’s, and several entertainers, including the host, LL Cool J, made explicit mention of Houston. The staged tribute to Houston consisted of Jennifer Hudson doing a technically adequate cover of Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You,” which reproduced none of the singer’s exquisite control. (The first verse of the song, a deceptive stroll around Houston’s languid, soft range, became a weird showcase for Hudson’s bass notes.)
Taylor Swift won several awards for “Mean,” and though she managed to suppress her “OMG ME?” surprise-face, she did end up gushing that it was “unbelievable” that country radio had played the single so many, many times. No, Taylor—it’s the definition of believable. You’re the only country star to be on the cover of Vogue in recent memory, so please accept that you’re a star and a grownup. We like you, but we’ve got stuff to do.
The opening performances were deceptively good. Lady Gaga, looking like a Kentucky Derby attendee wrapped in temporary fencing, danced adorably to Bruce Springsteen, who performed a new song called “We Take Care of Our Own” (from his new album, “Wrecking Ball”). It sounded like a reasonable average of all anthemic Bruce numbers and was entirely satisfying. Bruno Mars and his band performed under an old-school marquee, openly aping James Brown and Famous Flames while performing “Runaway.” The band executed synchronized moves every few syllables and Mars earned his pompadour, leading cheekbones first, voice second. Also completely fun. Then things would get progressively odd.
Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt mentioned both Houston and the late Etta James and then chose to do a brief and luminous version of James’s standard, “A Sunday Kind of Love.” (If anyone sang more confidently than Bonnie Raitt, still a mean guitar player, we missed it.) Woman-beating rage-broccoli Chris Brown lip-synced his single “Turn Up the Music” (without being threatened by Sir Elton John) and danced roughly as well as a third-rate Chicago footwork dancer. He ended his performance by back-flipping off the stage, though sadly not off the earth. He returned to the stage one or two or maybe eighteen times. It was one of the Grammys’ weirdest choices ever, since the person who almost unanimously invigorated R&B in a variety of ways last year was Drake, but his album came out after the September 30, 2011, cutoff point. So we got Chris Brown. Meet Chris Brown’s apologetic army of fans, whom he addressed as “Team Breezy” from the stage when accepting the award for Best R&B Album.
Foo Fighters won every Grammy with the word Rock in the title except for the one with Latin in the title. They also played twice—a long two. Rock music, both loud and soft, is alive and well but the Grammys seemed intent on burying that fact. There are dozens of hard-rock bands—like L.A.’s HEALTH or London’s British Sea Power—that are doing plenty with the format, and if it’s quiet you want, there are even more to choose from, long before you get to Grammy nominees Mumford & Sons. Legends the Beach Boys were submitted to a tribute that started with Maroon 5, segued into a very nervous Foster the People, and ended with a very shaky, reunited Beach Boys shuffling through “Good Vibrations.” Why submit them to this? I’m sure they wanted to, but remember what producers do: produce. Let the masters live on through recordings. It only got worse—and detailing every misstep feels somehow tacky. Chris Martin has apparently been told by anyone near him that wearing a big bright plastic watch does little to make us trust him. Rihanna is doing fine, so it barely matters the she hitched “We Found Love” up to her meandering duet with Coldplay, “Princess of China.” Coldplay did “Paradise,” which isn’t as good an anthem as “Charlie Brown,” especially with Martin going entirely wobbly with his wordless singing bits.
Paul McCartney popped up several times, once to perform a terrible new song and allow Joe Walsh to echo his own solo from “Hotel California,” and then later to hammer home some Beatles classics we haven’t heard enough yet. Several performers seemed to be locked into some kind of twofer deal, unable to simply play once and leave with their dignity intact. Katy Perry appeared twice, also, sort of. First, an impersonator appeared as Perry and then, with all the smoothness of a Gob Bluth illusion, the lights went out and the real Perry reëmerged, wrapped in something that made an attractive woman look like an off-market brand of string cheese. On another night, this would have been good clean fun, but in the middle of the Grammys’ unique torpor, it just delayed gratification further.
Something involving Deadmau5 and Lil Wayne and Foo Fighters happened and it may have had something to do with dance music, but there’s little reason to hang the Grammys’ insane choices on the state of pop, which is entirely healthy. The punch line here was to award Adele, Foo Fighters, Kanye, Bon Iver (Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album), and Taylor Swift, and call it a day. The ceremony fumbled badly when looking to the past (sorry, Whitney) and seemed shell-shocked by the present (sorry, every new act not named Skrillex). God bless downloading.
Top photograph by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images. Middle photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
