On Sunday 14th of March at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, musicians gathered far and wide on Zoom screens or in person to attend the 63rd Grammy Awards. The ceremony passed with no major technical failures and it featured several impressive performances that adapted well to the televised format with almost no live audience: Dua Lipa proving that she can actually dance instead of looking like a pencil sharpening, Taylor Swift’s cottage-core mashup of Cardigan/August/Willow, Doja Cat finding yet another way to make ‘Say So’ new and interesting, HAIM stomping around showing that they can in fact go toe-to-toe with any male rock band, and Bruno Mars making his suave comeback after snatching Lorde’s AOTY to name a few. While other performers, well, didn’t. (Harry Styles I’m looking right at your extremely underwhelming Grammy opening performance and ugly red-carpet look.)
The general consensus for the night was that there were no major upsets in the main ceremony, however, the largest snubs took place in the livestreamed ceremony before. BTS losing to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s ‘Rain on Me’ was a bold move from the Grammys, and it seemed like their ratings suffered from it too. More people watched member Jungkook step away from a live to go to the bathroom than watched the Grammys. Fiona Apple won two more well deserved chew toys for her dogs for her outstanding record Fetch The Bolt Cutters (it seems Shameika was right about her potential). That doesn’t mean that Phoebe Bridgers was not snubbed that night; she did not win a single Grammy for her sophomore album Punisher which was consistently ranked one of the best albums of the year, despite being nominated four times. And on that note, I think someone had better make sure Elton John fulfills his promise of punching someone.
