2011 Grammys Recap

Should I be embarrassed to say I was excited for this years Grammys? Last years Grammy’s ceremony was mildly entertaining, which is to say, by award show standards, it falls somewhere in-between great and incredible. This year, there were definitely some things to be excited for - Muse, Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry (*drooling*) and the Arcade Fire would all be performing, and the award for best album actually contained an album that I believed was truly the album of the year, the Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs. Lets be honest though, what are the odds of a legitimately phenomenal album beating out the likes of Eminem, Katy Perry and Lady Antebellum? So, on with the recap.

Last years recap started off with the good, and then got into the bad, and I’m going to stick with the tried-and-true formula. After a three hour tribute to Aretha Franklin, Train won an award for best Pop performance by a duo or group and gave an awesome speech, thanking Justin Bieber for "not being a duo or a group" and even giving Howard Stern a shout-out. Before, and apparently until her performance, Lady Gaga was carried in a giant egg, or as Chris Harrison of the Bachelore/tte made extremely clear - a womb. Her outlandish theatrics are starting to straddle the line of clever and annoying, but if you’re going to look like a fool, you may as well go the extra mile and encase yourself in an egg. Her performance of "Born This Way" was entertaining, and dare I say, socially empowering. Muse’s performance of "Uprising" was strong as expected, and keeping with the theme of the song, featured violent protesters destroying the stage - I’m currently on the fence of whether that was corny or cool, so I’ll give Muse the benefit of the doubt. After their performance, Muse pulled in the award for best rock album. Then came a performance featuring Bruno Mars, B.o.B. and Janelle Monae, the latter of the three I had never heard of, but was pleasantly surprised by the performance of her song "Cold War." Apparently she’s signed to Puff Daddy’s, err I mean Sean Puffy Combs’, err I mean P. Diddy’s, err I mean Diddy’s label. Eventually, Bob Dylan, Mumford and Son and the Avett Brothers performed together. The latter two would perform one of their originals and then all came together to perform "Maggie’s Farm" with the legendary Dylan, whose voice was drowned out by the music, and sadly, that’s not such a bad thing, he’s showing his age.

The main reason for watching the show was to see the Arcade Fire, so the Grammys successfully sucked me in to watching all two and a half hours of the ceremony by leaving the Arcade Fire for the very end. They would perform a great rendition of "Month of May" with pulsating strobe lights and Matt Hoffman pedaling around on his bicycle with a camera attached to his helmet - yeah, the bicycles were definitely out of place. The bands soulful and energetic performance more than made up for that random BMX expo which seemed to be a case of, "Hey guys look, Matt Hoffman is here. Matt, did you bring your bike? Oh you did, well all these other performers have all these bells and whistles on stage, and all we have are strobe lights. Are you interested in riding your bike around while we perform?" To close down the show, the coveted award of album of the year was delivered. Before the award was handed out, I could have told you who wasn’t winning, and that would be the outlier, the Arcade Fire. Then in a stunning twist of events - stunning for all the wrong reasons - the Arcade Fire took home the award. It was a touching moment to see the band legitimately shocked and honored. For their speech, Win Butler walked up to the microphone and thanked a few people and then said, "We’re going to play another song... Because we like music" and then performed "Ready to Start", the smiles on their faces were infectious

Now for the bad, and judging by the length of the previous paragraphs, you can safely assume that the good outweighed the bad - shockingly. The twenty minute Aretha Franklin tribute featuring the now infamous traitor to American patriotism, Christina Aguilera, and some random other divas was so incredibly drawn out and boring that I’m sure viewership was cut in half by the fifteen minute mark. Smack in the middle of the show was Justin Bieber’s performance with Usher and Jaden Smith – yes, the Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith. Will Smith is treating his kids like an investment; they’re working their asses off. Is their some kind of child labor law that Smith could be imprisoned for? The intro to their performance over-viewed Usher’s discovery of the Bieb’s, and thank God that was cleared up, because I don’t know if I would have understood the complexity of the performance if it wasn’t... It was a fine display of ninja’s jumping around on stage and lip-synching. Katy Perry’s performance was actually pretty awesome, she was propped up in the air on a swing and had an enormous cloth attached to the back of her dress which doubled as a screen for projections of her wedding videos. So why would this performance be in the bad category? Well simply because I’m a shallow guy who wanted to see more skin... I’m shameless. Moving on, how can the overall album of the year not win album of the year in its own genre? The Arcade Fire lost to The Black Keys for alternative album of the year. This isn’t so bad considering The Black Keys’ Brothers was an outstanding album, so at least both bands took home some hardware, but there is some very flawed logic to these awards. Lastly, the Grammys did a fine job of killing the moment by plugging in all their advertisements in a moment of haste during the celebratory Arcade Fire performance. You got to please the sponsors!

All in all, I was very happy with this years Grammys. The performances were entertaining, and the most important award went to the most deserving band.