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 Yonkers,
N.Y., in the late ‘80s she didn’t
expect to find herself next to Andrea Bocelli singing a Simon and Garfunkel
song on the Grammys. Chalk it up to another one of those odd Grammy programming
decisions: The opera singer and the queen of hip-hop soul both looked a little awkward.
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 London residency. It resurfaced as one of
those Grammy gimmicks that must’ve sounded good in some music exec’s glass
office, but fell strangely flat in execution – especially without access to the
3-D glasses handed out to audience members at the Staples
Center in Los Angeles. Celine Dion, Usher, Carrie
Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson took turns belting out lines
alongside a recording of Jackson’s
voice on "Earth Song." But the blustery anthem is not one of Jackson’s finest moments: “What about apathy?”
everybody! Jackson’s
children, Prince and Paris, then took the stage, and their simple, direct
eloquence made all that preceded it seem like so much overkill. Fighting through
his nerves, Prince Jackson said it best about his father: “Through
all his songs, his message was simple: Love.”
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.
Cirque du Soleil goes Pink: She’s been doing the acrobatics
in concert for years. But as she twirled slowly in midair while sending water
from her drenched body cascading down on the well-coifed audience, all the
while managing to sing (could she have been lip-synching?), Pink surely was the
talk of the TV show’s first hour with her high-flying performance.
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 winnersBest & Worst of 2010 Grammys