The Grammy’s are the biggest awards show for music, and they usually contain only a handful of awards and then several hours of performance. This is a great concept because most people would rather see the performances anyway, IF THEY’RE FUN AND UPBEAT. Last night’s show was the MOST boring awards show I’ve ever watched. They allowed snooze machine after snooze machine get onstage and croon out slow jams. It was a real struggle to stay awake for almost three hours with every performance serenading me to sleep. It was also the night of oldies collaboration, I assume in attempts to teach our youth who the classics are so they can cut the shit with tweeting out “AC/DC sounds like a really cool new artist.” I’m guessing it didn’t work. (Mostly because “Who Is Beck” was trending…)
We started off the night being reminded that LL Cool J is still hosting this thing, 20 years later. He’s also still wearing the same Kangol and licking those juicy lips every 30 seconds. Good to see some things never change. (He also forgoes a monologue…probably because he doesn’t want to get boo’ed off the stage—by me.)
The opening act is AC/DC and looking back I think this is the point where the Grammy’s really fooled us. I can see it now, some producer saying let’s open the show with a rockin performance from AC/DC so they’ll get all riled up for a bangin show and then we’ll hit em with the snooze button for the remaining three hours. Nailed it. This performance was for the old people and they really hit their target audience because I got a text from my mom that just said “ACDC!!!!” She was pretty excited. I personally kept thinking I was watching the final performance from School of Rock and was waiting for Zack Mooneyham to come out and melt faces with his guitar solo because of this outfit:
Here’s the breakdown of the rest of the night…
Sleepies:
-Ariana Grande’s performance of “Just A Little Bit of Your Heart” gives me just a little bit of the sleepies.
-Jessie J and old guy (Tom Jones…I googled it) sing “You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling” and Jessie J’s atrocious outfit is distracting me from this weird duet. Also Jessie’s voice wasn’t on point as it usually is.
-Kanye has his first Grammy’s performing in 6 years. I know that because the announcers reminded me 10 times, I’m surprised Kanye also didn’t remind us. He has a single spotlight on him as he sings “Only One” about baby North with an Autotuner. He’s also dressed up for the occasion with a full red sweatsuit. Side Note: Is autotune still a thing? I thought T-Pain killed it like 6 years ago. (AKA the last time Yeezus was allowed to perform at the Grammy’s. Never mind, it makes sense now.)
-Adam Levine & Gwen Stefani sing a song with only the words yes and yeah in it. It blows and Gwen tries to riff it up like Xtina would. No, no, no. They both look hawt though, so there’s that.
– Hozier performs “Take Me To Church” with that mop of curls and Annie Lennox pops in to give us all the scaries and sing a bunch of noises with crazy eyes.
-Prezzy Barack Obama makes a cameo to remind us how awful domestic abuse is, I’m lookin at you Chris Breezy. Then we’re all treated to a weird poetic speech from a domestic abuse survivor and by the end of her talk I genuinely thought I had just watched a scene from a play. It was a nice touch to add some downer abuse and violence snippets to a show full of sad, slow songs. High alert for wrist cutting last night.
-Katy peforms in a tight white dress that makes her look 3 months pregs and there are no gimmicks, no sharks with legs, and CERTAINLY no Missy. Booooooooo.
-Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett perform “Cheek to Cheek.” Gags writhes her body all over Tony’s and I don’t know how he doesn’t have a heart attack on the spot. She clearly rolled around in Cheeto dust pre-performance and also doesn’t know what to do with her hands because they keep spazzing.
-The KING of grooving, Ursher baby, sings a LULLABY with a harp and Steve Wonder comes out for a hot second. WHY. This is the point of the night where I had given up on ever hearing happy music again.
-The SUPER hyped up collaboration of Rihanna, Paul McCartney & Kanye where Paul’s mic is 100% turned off. He’s just there for shock value and to fuel more youth tweets of “Who is Paul McCartney?” Rihanna sounds gr8 even though she is wearing a baggy suit from Men’s Warehouse. Kanye tries to steal the show the entire time. At one point he shouts at Paul to pay his bail, it’s the most interaction Paul gets all night as he mimes into a muted mic and tries to keep up with the cool kids who are about four five seconds from WILDIN’.
-Sam Smith and Mary J Blige perform “Stay With Me” TWICE. Great voices, not exactly an upper.
-Chris Martin & Beck perform and basically are twins. They sing a slow song, obv.
-Beyonce was who I was waiting for all night to end the show on a BANG. She comes out wearing an angel-esque wedding gown with a full choir behind her and I slip into a deep coma never to return again. It’s embarrassing how long I waited for her to strip that gown off and shout BRING DA BEAT IN. Spoiler alert: She didn’t.
-John Legend and Common perform Glory after Bey and I think I was throwing things at my TV at this point. JK I was sleeping.
Highlights:
-Pharrell wins solo pop performance, struts onstage in his biz Bermudas and says “this is really awkward” a couple times before getting played offstage. If he’s referring to wearing knee length dress shorts to an awards show than I agree, it is really awkward.
-Miranda performs “Little Red Wagon” in a full leather bodysuit and cowboy boots, the sass is AMPED up and she wins the award for most upbeat song of the night.
-The REAL Barry Gibb comes onstage to present and all I want to see is this:
-Madonna the 56 year old wearing a red corset bodysuit has the second most upbeat performance of the night and she basks in the glory by slamming her crotch into her dancers faces. Her barf.com arms also make a debut when she strips her sparkle jacket off and the grand finale is when her limp body is risen above the stage. You do you, Madge.
-Josh Duhamel, Julian Edelman and Malcolm Butler present an award, clearly Malcolm gets a little nervsies and poops his pants trying to read the teleprompter, then they tell a cheesy interception joke when Malcolm snatches the winner out of Josh’s hands. LOL. No but seriously, I didn’t even care that this was super awks, Josh Duhamel and Julian Edelman were standing side by side and it was a breathtaking view. Fingers crossed Edelman took my advice on snatching phones up in Hollywood last night or we’re gonna have a lot of pics to sift through this morning from all his lays.
-Ed performs “Thinking out Loud” and it is magic and there might be some tears from me out of sheer joy from Ed saving this trainwreck. John Mayer joins him onstage just to make weird faces and play backup guitar. Go away, John. This is Ed’s moment. (Kim K is the only one sitting when Ed gets a standing O at the end. Killlll yerrrrseeelllffff.)
-Ed performs with some old people (Electric Light Orchestra?) and we get the funniest moment of the night when they pan to Paul McCartney as the ONLY one standing and getting his groove on. They keep a camera on him for so long it basically shames him into sitting down. Way to go, producers.
-This guy’s hair:
-BECAUSE WE JUST CAN’T LET HAPPY DIE. Pharrell performs a “new version” and is wearing a bellhop uniform with yellow sequin sneaks. The start of his performance his him shouting out things and Google Translate shouting it back to him in other languages. There’s choir action and piano solos and at the end Pharrell says, “I’m in your service oh Lord.” Bruh, God is ALSO sick of Happy so if you were in his service you wouldn’t have played it. Get outta here.
-Prince is still a creeper.
-Beck wins album of the year and asks for a recount. Kanye stands up to try to do a repeat of “Imma let you finish but…Beyonce had the best video of all TIME.” Beck welcomes him onstage to save us all from his awkward speech full of long pauses but Kanye’s like nah JUST KIDDING GUYS. I’m a sensitive father now, I don’t play that game anymore. Buzzzzzzzkilllllll.
-Apparently Kanye & T.Swizz do the Parent Trap handshake during a commercial break and become besties again, 6 years post-incident. If there’s also a collab in the future I quit music.
-Sia’s performs Chandalier with an extravagant set that is supposedly recreating a painting of “The Invisible Man” (This obv. went way over my head, but I read it somewhere.) The performance opens with Shia LaBeouf reading a strange letter. Sia stands in the scene facing the wall, singing and her dancers are Maddie Ziegler from Dance Moms and Kristen Wiig. Kristen hopping around in a leotard and doing goofy faces made me laugh out loud like I was watching an SNL sketch. Prob not what Sia was going for, but it was interesting to say the least. Also personal note to Sia: cut the shit with the hiding of your face. She does it because she doesn’t want to be famous YET we all know what she looks like. Enough is enough. I was praying she would win to see how she would handle her acceptance speech. Would she steal one of Daft Punk’s helmets from last year?
-Lots of blind jokes with Stevie Wonder and Jamie Foxx. Good to see he still has a sense of humor about his lack of sight.
-Sam Smith won literally all of the awards. He thanked his ex-BF for being a scumbag and getting him all deeze Grammy’s and also confessed that he once tried to lose weight to be successful and the lesson to take away here is don’t ever diet because if you don’t you’ll have four Grammys to show for it.
Winners:
Best New Artist- Sam Smith
Best Solo Pop Performance- Happy, Pharell
Best Pop Vocal Album-Sam Smith
Best R&B Performance- Drunk in Love, Beyonce
Best Rock Album- Beck
Best Country Album- Miranda Lambert
Album of the Year- Beck
Song of the Year- Stay With Me, Sam Smith
Record of the Year- Sam Smith
As a reward for sitting through that pile of sad, slow garbage, here’s the best performances from last year to cleanse you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BidCMrrJXA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUP_ECWMQo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImE8QV5Fs0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FY4MRdQOdE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSaxGesjybA
The Salty Ju 