Grammys 2021: 10 Takeaways From A Big, Weird Night

 

The 2021 Grammys somehow survived a COVID-inspired six-week delay, to not mention angry diatribes from The Weeknd, 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 printed itself was a triumph.

 Give huge amounts of credit to executive producer Ben Winston, making his Grammys debut: His telecast moved breezily across multiple stages, cut past years' fat and far of the filler, highlighted an enormous and diverse array of music and allowed the performers to be showcased at their best. A typical Grammys telecast has terrific highs and embarrassing lows, but Sunday night's performances were too proficiently and elegantly produced to permit for train wrecks. After a jumbled, clunky, Zoom-intensive Golden Globes telecast just a couple of weeks earlier, Winston showed the planet how it's done.

2. The awards themselves?

Hoo boy. you'll see it coming, yet it still felt shocking: The Grammys took a flash , upon handing Beyoncé the 28th Grammy of her world-class career, to acknowledge that she'd just surpassed Alison Krauss for the foremost Grammys ever awarded to a female artist. (Watch your back, Georg Solti!) Unacknowledged therein moment was that Beyoncé features a long history of getting omitted for the main awards of the night; she has never won record of the year or album of the year, and she or he won song of the year just one occasion , in 2010, for "Single Ladies (Put a hoop on It)." Scan an inventory of the Grammys that Beyoncé has won, and note the amount of times the modifier "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 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 visited Eilish, who spent much of her speech apologizing to Megan Thee Stallion for winning.

With no disrespect intended toward Eilish, who handled things well, that is the Grammys for you: they create progress; they create adjustments; they get your hopes up; they pull the football away at the eleventh hour .

3. the decision for boycotts will get louder.

 within the runup to the present year's Grammys, The Weeknd announced that he'd never submit his music for Grammys consideration again after the Recording Academy did not such a lot as nominate him for his blockbuster album After Hours. Beyoncé attended but didn't perform, and she or he appeared to expend as little energy as possible on the entire affair. The Grammys have an extended history of snubbing Black artists at inopportune moments — see, for a notorious example, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis beating Kendrick Lamar within the awards' 2014 hip-hop categories — and patience is wearing thin.

4. it had been a assortment for the large winners.

 Many observers expected the night to be yet one more coronation for Taylor Swift, whose album Folklore earned her six Grammy nominations and a few of her best reviews. But Swift went 0 for five to start out , only to require album of the year near the top of the telecast. Eilish, who famously dominated last year's awards, hadn't made much of a splash during the remainder of the evening. In both cases, the large wins sneaked abreast of them.

5. There was better news within the down-ballot races.

 While it had been a shame to ascertain Phoebe Bridgers go 0 for 4, Megan Thee Stallion was the clear and proper pick for best new artist (though it had been quite a head-scratcher when she wasn't nominated therein category last year). Fiona Apple, inexplicably exclude of nominations within the major categories, won best rock performance (for "Shameika") and best alternative music album (for Fetch the Bolt Cutters). H.E.R. took song of the year for "I Can't Breathe," a resonant and powerful track. Kaytranada became the primary Black musician to win best dance/electronic album within the category's 17-year history — an outrageous milestone, given the genre's origins, but a milestone nonetheless.

6. prepare for a tiresome new front within the culture wars!

 Last year, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released one among the filthiest songs ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, and "WAP" made its Grammys debut in grandly transgressive, explosively entertaining fashion. Rest assured that "cancel culture" and Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head are gonna need to make space on some conservative fainting couches, possibly by the time you read this.

7. Somehow, against all odds, none of the performances truly stank.

 This particular quite showcase — with careful stage management, good sound mixes, a mix of live and pre-taped moments, many stages to accommodate set changes then on — allowed artists to try to to their best work. This was the three 1/2-hour music-industry infomercial the Grammys craved, and therefore the beneficiaries included both the musicians themselves and a home audience that has been starving for live music.

8. The Grammys didn't forget struggling venues.

 Without turning into a telethon or slowing down the printed , the show did a pleasant job spotlighting a couple of of the various music venues whose long-term survival has been threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. it had been refreshing to ascertain the Recording Academy understand that its industry's success hinges on not only streaming and sales but also the return of live music and therefore the venues that make it possible.

9. Trevor Noah deserves more praise than you would possibly think.

 The Daily Show host maintained a reasonably low-key presence throughout the night — he didn't preside over any skits, and his monologue was limited to a couple of quick jokes — but he did a deft job moving the house audience through a sophisticated hunk of awards-show machinery. Awards-show hosting gigs are generally thankless, and he made a tough job look easy.

10. Finally, it cannot be reiterated enough:

 The Grammys still have tons of labor to try to to . it isn't a matter of claiming , "If Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar put out an excellent record in 2021, it's to win album of the year." It's that the Grammys aren't trusted, period, by wide swaths of their audience and membership, and any effort to correct that must start there. they need to make trust.

That trust can come only through transparency about their process, their membership and their efforts to raised reflect their industry and its massive worldwide audience. The Grammys' typical response to controversies tends to involve artist-specific attempts to redress previous years' grievances; that's a part of how Metallica aroused winning eight Grammys across six different years after infamously losing best metal performance to Jethro Tull in 1989.

The issue isn't that Beyoncé should have won album of the year in 2015 over Beck's Morning Phase or that Lemonade should have won album of the year in 2017 over Adele's 25, though both of these outcomes were — with no shade thrown at either winner — hard to stomach. the difficulty is that it's getting harder for the Grammys to stay on like this without facing a large-scale revolt from the artists whose buy-in they have so as to retain a semblance of relevancy.