The 2012 Adele's

As someone who can vividly recall every Grammys ceremony since 1997, I don't know if theres ever been a less suspenseful telecast than this year (except perhaps the year of the Santana sweep). And as the last living American who actually cares about the results of the Grammy Awards it felt good. Two years in a row now the Grammys have (very arguably) chosen the actual best album of the year for Album of the Year. Leaving aside the fact that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy wasn't even nominated for Album of the Year (which is a whole other issue, but that's for another time), it might actually be starting to seem like there is some sort of internal logic to the Grammys. Or I could be slowly going insane. But the very first time I heard 21 I thought "this will win a shit ton of Grammys". And it did! And that was true in nearly every category this year. The most obvious Grammy-friendly nominee wound up winning almost every time. And the fact that many of them were actually the most deserving nominees was an extra bonus.

But ultimately it doesn't matter.

Because the Grammys have always been the anti-Oscars. No cares about the awards; we all just watch for the entertainment value of the show itself. When talking about the Grammys it's never about who won or lost but how they played the game. "The game" of course being "performing great live musical numbers". And this year, they played (mostly) great as always. But before moving on to thoughts on each of the night's performances there are a few stray comments I had:

-LL Cool J was totally useful and necessary

-I'm really curious to see how the ratings are for this year's show because I feel like with Whitney Houston's death they could be off the charts. If you have to die (and we all do) I think we've now learned that the absolute best time to do it is the day before your industry's biggest awards show. Although I do wonder how things would have been different if she had died the SAME DAY as The Grammys. That would have been insane. And here I am looking at a human life and a great tragedy solely through the lens of how it effects a meaningless awards show. But one of my first thoughts when I heard the news of her death was, "well, I guess we know who is getting the final slot in the death montage tomorrow night". Which is awful. And also human.

Welcome to perspective in the age of twitter.

On a related note...

-Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt what were you DOING?!? Singing a tribute song that’s not by Whitney Houston??? Who is this Etta James person? Did she just die yesterday? I don’t think so! So why are you honoring her? How could Neil Portnow let this happen?

-Kanye is not at The Grammys??? That’s like Taylor Swift not being at the Country Music Awards. Is it some kind of protest? Yes everyone would agree he got egregiously shafted this year. And yes it must especially hurt since MBDTF was clearly designed specifically to win awards and critical approval. But even Stevie Wonder and Norah Jones collaborating on a Paul Simon tribute album released two days before he died in a terrible car accident wasn’t beating Adele this year so who really cares?

So where were you Kanye? Don’t even try to act like you had something better to do. A nation (specifically me) demands answers!

-In the upset of the evening, Adele’s speaking voice is even better than her singing voice! She should give speeches always. I havent enjoyed a person's Britishness that much since Amy Winehouse won Record of the Year for "Rehab". (BTW, gold star to whoever decided to sit Adele literally 3 steps from the stage)

-Text of the Night: (from my friend Chris on the strangeness of the Grammys) “George Strait and Taylor Swift in the same category makes me uncomfortable. It’s like having Shakespeare and Neil LaBute in the same category.”
(And if you don’t know who is Shakespeare and who is Neil LaBute in that analogy, then clearly you didn’t grow up in Texas)

Alright, on to the show. In chronological order:

Bruce Springsteen
This was a Bruce Springsteen song. It sounded like a Bruce Springsteen song. Bruce Springsteen performed it exactly the way Bruce Springsteen performs songs.

Bruce Springsteen.

Bruno Mars
I think Bruno Mars should only ever perform on Grammy Awards telecasts. Based on my experience of Bruno Mars in non-Grammy contexts he's a disposable performer of cheesy, bland, personality-less songs. Based on my experiences of him at the Grammys the past two years he's a person who brings the charisma of 1,000 suns to his high energy performances of awesome retro-soul jams. One of these two realities is not right. And I have no idea which.

Chris Brown
Don’t know why people were upset about Chris Brown performing. Pretty sure he didn’t beat any women TODAY. He did however rape my memories of playing Q-Bert surrounded by men wearing surgical masks. Which really are my some of my fondest memories.

I could come up with other thoughts on this performance but Chris Brown isn’t worth it. If he had beaten Taylor Swift he’d be in jail right now. Let’s move on.

Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarkson
BATHROOM BREAK!

Foo Fighters
Not the Foo Fighters best song obviously, but a pretty great performance. Dave Grohl always makes me wish I had chosen “rock n’ roll” as a profession. Also, nice to see that long hair is still around. It’s fun to watch it being whipped around.

All that being said though, no matter how many Grammys they win or great performances they give I will always consider The Foo Fighters failures until the day when they finally defeat Foo.

Rihanna & Coldplay
Wow, not a good Grammys so far for epileptics. A good Grammys however for Olivia Newton-John’s "Physical"-era fashion sense.

Some questions:
If you're a Los Angeles-based hip-hop dancer and you weren’t employed in that "We Found Love" routine is it officially time to hang it up?
Is it a bad thing that the lead singer of arguably the biggest band in the world is terrible at singing live?
Is it bad that a Chipotle commercial just did a better job of presenting Coldplay’s music than Coldplay did?
Is Chris Martin on the Mucaulay Culkin diet?

Lastly, I’m a big Coldplay fan so I say this with love, but here are some things that they should maybe never ever again reference in any of their songs:
-rainbows
-teardrops
-waterfalls
-butterflies

The Beach Boys
(I preface this all, like the last one, by saying I’m a HUGE Beach Boys fan. Pet Sounds is a desert island album for me and I’d put their 70's stuff up against anything. Seriously, check out Sunflower.)

I don’t usually watch CBS but I assume that their programming is normally just that Beach Boys reunion performance on a loop. It's the exact opposite of the dance music performance that’s coming up. I never thought a song usually in the discussion for Greatest Song of All Time could sound so placid.

Also, my mom texted before the performance to ask how many of the Beach Boys are still alive? Is it safe to now say technically none of them? And how long do you think it will take Madame Tussauds to get their Brian Wilson wax figure back?

Paul McCartney (1st Performance)
John Lennon is glad he’s dead

Taylor Swift
I am an unabashed Taylor Swift fan. I thought she was great. I liked the presentation. I like the song. And I’m thrilled to see her growing into a confident and exciting live performer. Which is important because she will be performing on the Grammys every year from now until the end of time.

Good job.

Katy Perry
Thought that was definitely one of the best performances of a song about having sex with an alien that Ive ever seen at the Grammys. When she switched over to the stuff with the fire and the shattering glass I got a little confused, but hey, a new Katy Perry song! That's all I really need out of life. (No really, it is.)

Adele
I think people have treated appearances by the Pope with less reverence than I treated that Adele performance. Watching Adele sing is like watching Meryl Streep do a monologue. Whitney Houston only died because she finally felt confident that she had an acceptable new host body. Give Adele all the awards ever. (Oh, you were already planning on it? Okay, carry on then…)

Glen Campbell Tribute
That was nice. I’m glad they did it. My emotional reaction to it probably had more to do with my deep-seated fear of Alzheimer’s than the performance itself, but whatever. Still nice.

And hey, remember that time Jon Lovitz hilariously had the DJ play “Rhinestone Cowboy” at the school dance in High School High? Yeah…neither do I…

Neil Portnow
NEIL FUCKING PORTNOW BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not quite enough on how downloading music will lead to the downfall of civilization this year, but who cares??? With his body of work that’s like complaining that Bob Dylan’s new stuff isn’t as good as the classics. It’s still Neil Portnow!!!!

Oh Neil Portnow, never change.

(On a side note, are we all entirely sure that Neil Portnow wasn’t at the Beverly Hilton Saturday afternoon…?)

Whitney Houston Tribute
Barely a day’s notice to prepare for singing a tribute to the greatest vocal performance of all time? And you absolutely nail it? That’s some fucking lady balls (ovaries?) right there Jennifer Hudson. Mad props.

Dance Music Thing
Dance music has been on The Grammys on CBS, so we can all be done with it now, right kids?

To get semi-serious for a minute, one of the questions I’ve always had is what sort of insane music our kids would have to listen to in order to piss us off. I mean we’re a generation that knows all the words to Tupac’s “Hit Em Up”, a song that begins “That’s why I fucked your bitch you fat motherfucker” and then goes downhill (uphill?) from there. Well, we finally have our answer. Because I’ve never felt older in my life than the first time I heard (the Grammy winning!!!) “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”. (I still feel genuinely scarred by the experience.) And basically the only thought I had during this whole dance music tribute thingy was “I am very old and very scared”. Also, “that mouse head seems very unsafe”.

(But seriously though, what did the Foo Fighters playing “Rope” have to do with dance music? I demand logic from my nonsense!)

Nicki Minaj
Nicki has taken all of Gaga’s style but none of her substance. I love Gaga, but I really hope this is not what she hath wrought. I’m sure the Grammys let Nicki Minaj go second to last in the show because she promised them controversy, but really, it was just predictable and boring. I’ve seen train wrecks that were better conceived than that.

Nicki is somehow the exact opposite of nearly every other successful mainstream hip hop artist in that her actual rapping ability is inversely proportional to the quality of her music instead of the other way around. And unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

Oh well, we’ll always have “Monster”

Paul McCartney (2nd Performance)
Needed more guitar.

No but seriously, how great was that? The only thing that would have made it better was if he had capped it off with "Her Majesty". But then again (like all people worth knowing) I’m a huge Beatles nerd.

(And speaking of being a Beatles nerd, is it safe at this point to declare Paul’s longtime backing drummer as the 5th Beatle? Because that guy is awesome. And if so, I should probably learn his name. Especially since he’s basically a member my family at this point)

Anyway, great way to close the show as that’s exactly why we tune into the Grammys. For reminding us that despite the awards they give out honoring the best in music, that music can infact still be the best.

Can't wait for next year.