{"id":2662,"date":"2021-03-20T14:38:55","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T09:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicplaylister.com\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2021-03-20T14:38:57","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T09:08:57","slug":"the-grammy-awards-2021-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicplaylister.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/20\/the-grammy-awards-2021-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grammy Awards 2021 – Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sunday,\u00a014 March 2021 was\u00a0Music\u2019s Biggest Night, the occasion where we gather to watch\u00a0the Grammys\u00a0and find out how much the Recording Academy has or hasn\u2019t adjusted to meet the times. In a good year, expecting the show to make great plays is a game of acceptable losses where, inevitably, people go home upset and fans flood the internet with outrage. But 2020 was a maze of horrors from start to finish; it was during last year\u2019s Grammy red carpet that news broke that Kobe Bryant passed away. Over the ensuing year, a global pandemic put concerts on hold, pushed beloved nightlife venues to the brink of extinction, pinched earnings in every corner of the industry, and claimed the lives of beloved artists from folk lifer\u00a0John Prine<\/a>\u00a0to power-pop veteran\u00a0Adam Schlesinger<\/a>\u00a0to country-music trailblazer\u00a0Charley Pride<\/a>. What kind of night is appropriate in the shadow of that? How do you summarize what we lost and what we won in spite of it? This year, the Grammys worked harder to deliver a better show than in several years past, to the benefit of the viewers and the nominated artists, but fell back on a few of the classic Grammy inconsistencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aim appeared to be to prove that the Recording Academy has really changed after\u00a0recent tumult. In 2018, when asked to comment on that year\u2019s overwhelmingly male cast of winners in general categories, longtime Academy president Neil Portnow said that women needed to \u201cstep up\u201d in order to be recognized, sparking backlash that ironically concluded with Portnow announcing he would be stepping\u00a0down\u00a0<\/em>in 2019. Deborah Dugan, Portnow\u2019s replacement and the Academy\u2019s first woman president, was nudged out days before the 2020 ceremony, we were told, due to complaints of bullying from an assistant. (On the way out, Dugan claimed to have witnessed widespread ethical and financial mismanagement during her months as president, raising questions that haven\u2019t all been answered.) This year\u2019s show was producer, songwriter, and Grammy Foundation exec Harvey Mason Jr.\u2019s chance to shine as interim Academy president, but controversy struck again when nominees were announced in November, and the Weeknd <\/a>responded to\u00a0being\u00a0snubbed\u00a0by vowing to\u00a0boycott the show. Justin Bieber\u00a0<\/a>complained\u00a0that\u00a0Changes\u00a0<\/em>was nominated in the wrong categories. Nicki Minaj<\/a> and\u00a0Zayn Malik<\/a> voiced\u00a0long-standing displeasure\u00a0with the show and the Academy. The objective of the 2021 Grammys was not just to \u201cget it right,\u201d to navigate the tricky business of the pandemic awards show with grace, or to reflect movingly on a rough year. It also had to justify its own enduring prestige and prove that it is aware of and committed to righting its own criticisms. Sunday\u2019s show approached the task by getting out of its own way and having talent do most of the talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was a no-brainer letting easygoing performances from gifted artists eat up most of the event\u2019s nearly four-hour run time, but the round-robin staging, which many Twitter observers noted to be reminiscent of the BBC\u2019s\u00a0Later \u2026 with Jools Holland<\/em>,gave off a glimmer of the loose sense of togetherness you\u2019d glean from\u00a0watching artists vibe to each other\u2019s music\u00a0when the cameras cut to the crowd. (To that end, host Trevor Noah was less of a comedic voice there to supply lacerating wit and more of a bro checking in on various scenes of chill. Anytime he tried to do much more than that, it kinda fell flat.) Seeing Bad Bunny mouthing words to Dua Lipa\u2019s \u201cLevitating\u201d and Harry Styles<\/a> stanning Haim and Black Pumas was tonally much more inviting than the Zoom-meeting energy of\u00a0last month\u2019s Golden Globes, the seemingly digitized viewers at\u00a0last summer\u2019s MTV Video Music Awards, and the nostalgic\u00a0Total Request Live\u00a0<\/em>mood the same season\u2019s\u00a0BET Awards\u00a0offered. Rotating nominees into the stage where awards were handed out led to delightful interactions like\u00a0Megan Thee Stallion<\/a> and Lizzo <\/a>having a laugh together\u00a0at the top of the night and Taylor Swift<\/a> excitedly cheering everyone (but also cringe like\u00a0Billie Eilish<\/a> exclaiming through her disbelief\u00a0at winning Record of the Year twice in a row that she felt Megan deserved it more, again inviting complaints about stuff that wasn\u2019t really her fault, but now drawing comparisons to the good-intentioned but performative wokeness of\u00a0Macklemore\u2019s <\/a>text apology to Kendrick <\/a>Lamar\u00a0for sweeping the rap categories in 2014). The sound was mostly great during the performances, and overwrought, nonsensical artist pairings were out, presumably due to the difficulties of the COVID protocols \u2014 but this didn\u2019t necessarily keep anything low-key, as the elderly women dancing in judges\u2019 gowns in\u00a0DaBaby\u2019s performance\u00a0and the unexpectedly green dancers in\u00a0Cardi B<\/a> and Megan\u2019s racy prime-time debut of \u201cWAP\u201d\u00a0proved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Performances were otherwise a blast, and quality music won awards. The late, great Chick Corea,\u00a0Toots Hibbert<\/a>, and John Prine won five awards between them. Honors went to Nas<\/a> and Ledisi<\/a>, both seasoned performers who\u2019d been snubbed at least a dozen times apiece. The Strokes won Best Rock Album after two decades of being overlooked in the Grammy nominations.\u00a0Beyonc\u00e9 <\/a>made history twice\u00a0as wins for\u00a0Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s \u201cSavage\u201d remix<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Black Is King<\/em>\u2019s \u201cBlack Parade\u201d tied her with bluegrass legend Alison Krauss\u2019s 27 career wins and later pushed her to 28, the most Grammy wins for any singer of any gender.\u00a0Kaytranada\u00a0was (somehow) the first Black artist to win Best Dance\/Electronic Album in 16 years. Bad Bunny accepted the Best Latin Pop Album award in broadcast (though the moment originally happened during a commercial break). Taylor Swift became the first woman to\u00a0win Album of the Year three times, as\u00a0folklore\u00a0<\/em>(deservedly) snagged top honors, and Swift joined Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon on the short list of singers with three AOTY wins. (Kanye West<\/a> winning for Best Christian Contemporary Music Album\u00a0after tweeting a video of himself pissing on a Grammy last fall, a potential career-ender for your average CCM performer, was certainly \u2026 a choice.) As much as it\u2019s possible to read intent into the actions of the Grammy voting pool \u2014 and honestly, who ever knows \u2014 Sunday\u2019s ceremony felt like a sharp turn in the right direction. But those come with turbulence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Grammys played catch-up at the cost of major upsets. Strong competition in the pop categories set fandom against fandom as\u00a0BTS\u00a0<\/a>and Doja Cat left empty-handed.\u00a0Fiona Apple broke a long dry streak; Tame Impala, Big Thief, and Phoebe Bridgers were shut out. (Rock categories badly need restructuring. \u201cAlternative,\u201d such that it is a real genre, is a catchall term that\u2019s as puzzling recognizing Fiona and Beck as sharing a genre this year as it was in 1991, situating The Replacements, Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor, and Laurie Anderson in the same scene. It is absurd to break R&B into three strains but keep zero punk categories.) Nas won over the (much better)\u00a0Freddie Gibbs\u00a0and Alchemist album. Giving Ice-T his first Grammy in 30 years, for Body Count\u2019s latest, meant no posthumous honors for Power Trip\u2019s Riley Gale. Sturgill Simpsonand the Irish post-punk quartet Fontaines D.C. were just as deserving as The Strokes.\u00a0Thundercat\u00a0won, but\u00a0Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington, and\u00a0Chloe x Halle\u00a0didn\u2019t. It remains fishy how often Beyonc\u00e9 gets overlooked in the general categories.\u00a0Fetch the Bolt Cutters\u00a0<\/em>deserved a crack at AOTY. A few preshow performers and acceptance speeches,\u00a0like Burna Boy\u2019s, could have fit in the main show if it cut a few lengthy pop-artist promos. For smaller artists, being siloed in genre categories is marginalizing on several fronts: They lose out on face time, they\u2019re often left out of general categories, and they\u2019re pitted against better-known artists in their own genres for accolades that could open doors and raise rates. Nominations start to feel like name-checking cool bands for the cred, a method of gesturing at open-mindedness and earning goodwill without acting on it, a suggestion of daring change that dangles enticingly out of reach. One hopes that these are just the growing pains of a stiff music-industry institution getting loose under new management and that the plan is to keep pushing. This was the most fun and the least baffling Grammy ceremony in many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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