Grammys 2021:10 Takeaways From A Big, Weird Night
Grammys 2021 somehow survived a COVID-inspired six-week delay, not to mention angry diatribes from The Weekend, and put together a seamless, entertaining, music-packed telecast that also proved utterly, bafflingly infuriating. How can all that be true?
Read on!
1. The broadcast itself was a triumph:
Give Executive Producer Ben Winston huge credit, who made his Grammys debut: his broadcast lightly moved across multiple stages, cutting the fat of years past and plenty of padding, highlighting a huge and diverse range of music and leaving the performers allow them to show off at their best. A typical Grammys broadcast has great highs and embarrassing lows, but Sunday night’s performances were too skillfully and elegantly produced to allow for train wrecks. After a jumbled, clumsy, Zoom intensive Airing Golden Globes just a few weeks earlier, Winston showed the world how to do it.
2. The prices themselves? Hoo boy:
You could see it coming, but it still felt shocking: the Grammys 2021 took a moment to hand Beyoncé the 28th Grammy of her world-class career to acknowledge that she had just surpassed Alison Krauss for most Grammys ever awarded to a woman artist Watch out, Georg Solti! At the time, it was not recognized that Beyoncé has a long history of passing the evening’s major accolades; she has never won record of the year or album of the year, and she only won song of the year once, in 2010, for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Scan a list of the Grammys 2021 that Beyoncé has won, and note the number of times the modification “R&B” appears.
So, when the time came to award the night’s final prize, it had to be Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé’s “Savage,” right? Megan had already won best new artist; “Savage” had already won best rap performance and best rap song; Beyoncé’s “Black Parade” had already won best R&B performance, and her “Brown Skin Girl” had already won best music video (which means that Beyoncé’s 9-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, now has her first Grammy). Billie Eilish, for her part, had won only best song written for visual media, for “No Time to Die.” But record of the year went to Eilish, who spent much of her speech apologizing to Megan Thee Stallion for winning.
With no disrespect intended toward Eilish, who handled the situation well, that’s the Grammys for you: They make progress; they make adjustments; they get your hopes up; they pull the football away at the last minute.
3. The call for boycotts is getting louder:
In the run up to this year’s Grammys, The Weekend announced that he’d never submit his music for Grammys consideration again after the Recording Academy failed to so much as nominate him for his blockbuster album After Hours. Beyoncé attended but didn’t perform, and she seemed to expend as little energy as possible on the whole affair. The Grammys have a long history of snubbing Black artists at inopportune moments — see, for a notorious example, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis beating Kendrick Lamar in the awards’ 2014 hip-hop categories — and patience is wearing thin.
4. It was a mixed bag for the big winners:
Many observers expected the night to be yet another coronation for Taylor Swift, whose album Folklore earned her six Grammy nominations and some of her best reviews. But Swift went 0 for 5 to start, only to take album of the year near the end of the telecast. Eilish who famously dominated last year’s awards, hadn’t made much of a splash during the rest of the evening. In both cases, the big wins sneaked up on them.
5. There was better news in the down ballot races:
While it was a disgrace to see Phoebe Bridgers go 0 for 4, Megan Thee Stallion was the clear and proper choose for finest new artist (although it was sort of a head-scratcher when she wasn’t nominated in that class final year). Fiona Apple, inexplicably shut out of nominations within the main classes, gained finest rock efficiency (for (*10*)) and finest different music album (for Fetch the Bolt Cutters). H.E.R. took track of the year for “I Can’t Breathe,” a resonant and highly effective observe. Kaytranada turned the primary Black musician to win finest dance/digital album within the class’s 17-year historical past — an outrageous milestone, given the style’s origins, however a milestone nonetheless.
6. Prepare for an exhausting new front in the culture wars!
Last year Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released one of the dirtiest songs ever Billboard Hot 100 and “WAP” made their Grammys debut in a hugely transgressive, explosively entertaining way. Rest assured, “cancel culture” and Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head will have to make way on a few conservative fainting couches, possibly by the time you read this.
Also read: 21-year-old Millionaire Was Hired By Facebook At 17 And Now Works At Google, His Career Advice.
7. Somehow, against all odds, none of the performances truly stank:
This particular kind of showcase — with careful stage management, good sound mixes, a blend of live and pre-taped moments, many stages to accommodate set changes and so on — allowed artists to do their best work. This was the 3 1/2-hour music-industry infomercial the Grammys craved, and the beneficiaries included both the musicians themselves and a home audience that has been starving for live music.
8. The Grammys did not overlook struggling venues:
Without turning right into a telethon or slowing down the printed, the present did a pleasant job spotlighting just a few of the numerous music venues whose long-term survival has been threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. It was refreshing to see the Recording Academy perceive that its {industry}’s success hinges on not solely streaming and gross sales but in addition the return of dwell music and the venues that make it potential.
9. Trevor Noah deserves more credit than you may think:
The daily show Host remained fairly unobtrusive throughout the night – he didn’t lead any sketches and his monologue was limited to a few quick jokes – but he did a deft job of guiding the home crowd through a complicated piece of prize-giving machines. Hosting appearances for awards shows are generally ungrateful, and he made a difficult job easy.
10. Finally, it can’t be reiterated enough: The Grammys still have a lot of work to do:
The Grammys nonetheless have numerous work to do. It’s not a matter of claiming, “If Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar put out a great record in 2021, it has to win album of the year.” It’s that the Grammys should not trusted, interval, by vast swaths of their viewers and membership, and any effort to appropriate that should begin there. They should create belief.
That belief can come solely by means of transparency about their course of, their membership and their efforts to raised mirror their {industry} and its huge worldwide viewers. The Grammys’ typical response to controversies tends to contain artist-specific makes an attempt to redress earlier years’ grievances; that is a part of how Metallica wound up profitable eight Grammys throughout six totally different years after infamously shedding finest metallic efficiency to Jethro Tull in 1989.
The problem is not that Beyoncé ought to have gained album of the year in 2015 over Beck’s Morning Phase or that Lemonade ought to have gained album of the year in 2017 over Adele’s 25, although each of these outcomes had been — with no shade thrown at both winner — onerous to abdomen. The problem is that it is getting tougher for the Grammys to maintain on like this with out dealing with a large-scale revolt from the artists whose buy-in they want in an effort to retain a semblance of relevancy.