Grammys 2015 recap: Prince owned the night & Beck almost got Kanyed
Prince delivers a pointed statement while presenting Album of the Year at the #Grammys. http://t.co/JvmJD7sADD pic.twitter.com/NDbER3Ep0C
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) February 9, 2015
Last night’s Grammy Awards were all over the place. Around 10 pm, I really just stopped caring completely and I think the producers made a major mistake with how they scheduled the performances. There was a weird hour-long gap where no awards were being passed out and all of the performances were trying to lull me into a deep sleep. Bedhead, CB and I all thought this year’s Grammys were such a snoozefest, but we’re still going to power through. Just know, this isn’t a comprehensive recap of everything that happened and every performance. These are just highlights of some of what I found interesting/bad/cool. You can see the full list of 2015 Grammy winners here.
*PRINCE. Prince is everything. He wore a shiny, glittering orange ensemble and he brought shade and realness. EVERYTHING. He said: “Albums… remember those? Albums still matter. Like books and black lives, albums still matter.”
*AC/DC. They were part of the pseudo-cold open performance. I was not into it. No offense, but I thought this would have been better later in the evening, not for the opening. It just makes the Grammys seem really dated (which they are, but I thought they were trying to skew younger?).
*Madonna. We really need to talk about Madonna’s performance. On one side, I feel like we should support her because she’s an icon and it sucks to age and we all fight it as best we can. But on the other side, I feel like it has gotten flat-out ridiculous. She was moving so gingerly, I knew she was worried about falling and breaking something (a hip?). She’s lost the ability to properly dance, so her dancers just threw her around. And the whole staging for that performance was supposed to be “bullfighter” or matador-realness but it just ended up looking demonic, like this was on that tape during True Detective, you know? We’ll discuss this further in a separate post.
*Sam Smith. He won Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Album, Song of the Year, Record of the Year. I liked Sam’s duet with Mary J. Blige on “Stay With Me” but I was actually hoping for a performance of “I’m Not the Only One,” which I think is a stronger song. When he won Record of the Year, he thanked the man who broke his heart because it turned out really well for him. Classic Adele Move.
*Beck. I’ll be honest, I didn’t even pay any attention to Beck’s new album or take his nominations that seriously, but he ended up taking home some major awards, like Album of the Year. He beat out Beyonce for that award and Kanye almost went FULL KANYE. I think Beck would have enjoyed that and he seemed to want Kanye to come up there. Later, in the post-Grammy interviews, Kanye did say that Beck should turn over his Grammy to Beyonce and when they told Beck about it, he sort of agreed, saying that he thought Bey was going to win. Beck also said he was thrilled that Kanye was going to stage crash his Grammy win: “I was just so excited he was coming up. He deserves to be on stage as much as anybody. How many great records has he put out in the last five years right?… I still love him and think he’s genius. I aspire to do what he does.” Aw. Beck is classy.
*Tom Jones & Jessie J duet on “You Lost That Loving Feeling.” I really, really wished they had done “What’s New Pussycat?” Just because that song is awesome.
*Pharrell Williams. He won Best Pop Solo Performance. He also performed a version of “Happy” that was like a performance art piece. It got SO DARK. But then it went “Happy.” He also did a tribute to “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” with the dancers in black hoodies.
*Paul McCartney & Ed Sheeran. He didn’t win anything and I wasn’t into his performance but that’s just because I don’t like his sappy, too-earnest song. But I was SO into ELO singing “Evil Woman.” It felt like everyone else (especially Paul McCartney) was into it too.
*Hozier. The Hozier/Annie Lennox performance of “Take Me To Church” and “I Put A Spell On You” was amazing. Easily my favorite performance of the night.
*Brooke Axtell & Katy Perry. It started with an introduction by President Obama, who drew attention to domestic violence, sexual assault and rape. Then Brooke Axtell, a domestic violence survivor and activist, took the stage for a spoken word piece about what she had survived and how every woman deserves to be loved and not assaulted, that violence is never love. Then Katy Perry sang “By the Grace of God.” You can read more about Axtell here. #ItsOnUs
*Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney’s performance of their song was blah. I don’t get why people like the song because I kind of think it sucks.
*Beyonce. By the time her performance rolled around – she was the next-to-last of the night – I was already so tired, I could barely concentrate. I will say this… her performance, and Common and John Legend’s performance, probably should have opened the show. No joke. Bey also won some Grammys, just not any of the big ones.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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