The 52nd Grammy Awards: Taylor Swift wins album of year
Taylor Swift accepts the award for Album of the Year at the 2010 Grammys. (Robyn Beck, Getty Images)
In another one of those Grammy shockers, Taylor Swift won the night’s biggest award – album of the year for “Fearless” -- after a nationally televised performance Sunday that pointed out how richly she didn't deserve it.
In the live face-off at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards between Swift and Beyonce, who took home six statues, Lady B was the clear winner with a raucous medley of her “If I Were a Boy” and Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” Swift, in contrast, sounded woefully out of tune in a duet with Stevie Nicks, the latest in a string of underwhelming performances on national television.
Yet it was Swift who bested Beyonce for the prestigious best-album honors. Beyonce’s consolation prize was song of the year (“Single Ladies [Put a Ring on It]”). Kings of Leon took record of the year (“Use Somebody”) and the Zac Brown Band won best new artist. Also shut out in the major categories were Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Eyes. Gaga jumped into a pit of fire and the Peas danced with robots, but to no avail.
As if a staggering 1003 nominations in 109 categories weren’t enough, here are a few categories of our own:
Censors working overtime: Lil Wayne, Eminem and Drake – can’t recall a more intense hip-hop performance on this most staid of awards shows. Too bad most of it was inaudible, as the foul-mouthed trio gave the guardians of public decency a migraine while huge chunks of their performance were muted. Not saying we needed to hear explicit language on prime-time TV, but it does point out how ultimately unsatisfying most live music performances on television are because of such restrictions.
Beck-ola! Jeff Beck paid homage to the late guitar great Les Paul by dancing on the strings while covering the old Les Paul-Mary Ford hit “How High the Moon” with vocalist Imelda May. She sounded heavily processed, but Beck was the real deal. If that doesn’t inspire any aspiring ax-man to junk “Guitar Hero” and pick up a real guitar, nothing will.
Best fashion choice: On a night when outrageousness was the rule, Maxwell stood out by going classic. Dark suit, tie, Marvin Gaye-like smoothness, right down to a Tammi Terrell-style duet with Roberta Flack on “Where is the Love.”
When the song isn’t very good … add lots of strings, a marching band, dance badly. Dave Matthews did all of the above in an attempt to salvage “You & Me.”
She never saw it coming: Bet when Mary J. Blige was
clawing her way out of
Were You Holding Your Breath … about which song Bon Jovi was going to play in fan voting? Did anyone think it wasn’t going to be “Livin’ on a Prayer”?
Back from the dead, in 3-D: The Michael Jackson tribute
was one of the set pieces scheduled for his aborted
Pitch-corrector must not have been working: Taylor Swift
sounded flat, especially when she jumped in to sing “Rhiannon” with Stevie
Nicks, who also sounded off. Swift looked more confident than she has on past nationally televised awards shows, but her vocals suggested otherwise.
Comeback kid: Less than a month after brain surgery, Leon Russell banged the keys with the Zac Brown Band, a refreshing throwback to a time when bearded, potbellied Southern guys played roots rock like their lives depended on it.
How do you spell train wreck? A-U-T-O-T-U-N-E. That chaotic Jamie Foxx/T-Pain collision, which started out as mocking opera, then segued into Auto-Tune overkill. (Could someone please kill Auto-Tune now? Didn’t Jay-Z already pronounce it dead?) Not even a Slash guitar solo could save it.
Naughty, naughty? Sure sounded to me like the audio dropped out during Fergie’s rap as the futuristic Black Eyed Peas got all sci-fi on us. Actually, the censors did us all a favor, because as MC’s go, Fergie has got flow issues.
Pink performs at the Grammys. (Kevin Winter, Getty Images) View more photos of Pink's performance at the 2010 Grammys.
Her night? Sensing that she just might run the table on her 10 nominations early on, Beyonce came out with a performance that was all windblown fury and overkill, slamming together her “If I Were a Boy” (grabbing her junk in the process) with Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” Unusually aggressive by Lady B standards, especially coming off her classy Etta James moves in “Cadillac Records.”
Makeup! Someone get me makeup! What was with the runny facepaint on Lady Gaga and Elton John in their piano duet? Pretty cool opening set by Gaga, but somebody should’ve reconsidered that hideous makeup job. Yeah, yeah, I get that she got thrown into a "fire" and came out "charred." Just looked cheap. I really like that she's willing not to play the traditional dance-pop diva role, but this was distracting.
Savior of the music industry: Susan Boyle sold a ton of records, but she was no-show, in part because her debut was released too late for Grammy consideration. Still, in a year where the Grammys swung hard toward younger performers, it was a “48-year-old housewife in sensible shoes,” as host Stephen Colbert called her, who gave the sagging industry a late sales uplift.
Better late than never? Neil Young won his first Grammy award, for box-set packaging (“Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 [1963-1972]”). As the LA times pointed out, that ties him with Britney Spears. Seriously.
Second City flop: Tough night for artists with Chicago connections. Kurt Elling won for best jazz vocal album (“Kurt Elling Sings The Music Of Coltrane And Hartman”); Kanye West for best rap song (“Run This Town”). But nominees such as Common, Wilco, Neko Case and Mavis Staples went home empty.
greg@gregkot.com
Related:
Photos: Grammy Awards 2010 red carpet
A complete list of 2010 Grammy winners