The Grammys Sucked and Kendrick Was Robbed... But They Were Also Pretty Fun?

Holy hell was that one long, boring, pointless slog. Except for ‘Hamilton.’ And Kendrick Lamar. And Lady Gaga. Wait... were they actually good?
Of course the 2016 Grammy Awards ended with Sofia Vergara shaking her ass in a cardboard yellow taxi while Pitbull and Robin Thicke sang. In a way, it was an inevitable pop culture travesty.
This was an awards show that staged a revolution. That gave us 30 minutes of legendary performances. That brought Hamilton from Broadway history to our living rooms, saw Kendrick Lamar announce himself officially as one of the most important musical voices of our generation, and helped Lady Gaga capture lightning in a bottle with her psychedelically perfect tribute to David Bowie.
Yes, the Grammys would feature all that and then leave us with Pitbull. What else would we expect?


What, honestly, can we think about this year’s Grammy Awards, at once a cruise ship lounge act that was lost at sea, an easy listening radio station's 2 a.m. programming playlist come to life, a spotlight for irrelevance, and yet, still, a showcase for some of the most incendiary and essential musical moments that have been staged in the show's 58 years.
Can we turn back the clock and live in a world where we only watched the 20 minutes featuring Hamilton and Kendrick Lamar and then went on to more enjoyable things? Well if we did that, we'd have missed out on Taylor Swift's epic retort to the current Kanye West controversy during her acceptance speech for Album of the Year.
We’d have missed the opportunity to whine that she won the award instead of Kendrick Lamar (even though we all already suspected that she would.) We’d have missed the opportunity to marvel over the lunacy of a music awards show that would have so many sound issues—music! sound!—and that had the idiotic wisdom to follow the one-two punch of Hamilton and Lamar’s performances with the words, “Now please welcome Seth MacFarlane!”
We’d have missed, at least for this brief moment, living in a world where Demi Lovato’s vocals outshined Adele’s, and where Justin Bieber is a respected musician. We’d have missed Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry have a collective midlife crisis before our very eyes.
We’d have missed what were at once the best and the worst Grammy Awards of all-time.

'Hamilton' performing during the 2016 Grammys.
It all started with Anna Wintour opening the night in a fabulous sequined blue jumpsuit and a convincing rendition of Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods.” Just kidding! That was a joke about Swift’s very sillly new mom bob. What is very serious is “Out of the Woods,” one of the least fun songs off Swift’s now Grammy-winning album and therefore a very odd choice to kick off the ceremony.
Sure, everything is all rousing swells and melodramatic bridges, but it all sort of devolves into silliness when the lyrics just repeat themselves over and over. But then, you know, Swift set off a glitter bomb and the crowd went wild, so things started off excitingly enough, I guess.
You actually relish and become wistful for the energy Swift relentlessly brings to performances when, for essentially the next 90 minutes, unusual pairings of serviceable singers pose on stage and sleepily perform slow ballads together in the dark.
First there’s Carrie Underwood and—oh my, howdy there—young country hunk Sam Hunt, her voice embarrassingly overpowering his but his tight white t-shirt making it so you’re almost distracted away from noticing. I appreciated the control room’s “yeesh…just zoom in on his bicep” panicked reaction to the strangely menacing, chemistry-free performance.
The Weeknd followed with a medley of hits that were performed in a style that apparently paid homage to Michael Jackson. But can you really call something an homage when it was so terrible? Off-key and with scary goat-bleat vibrato, The Weeknd, typically an explosive live performer, whimpered to a weak death. Guess this is what happens when you ask The Weeknd to perform on a Monday! Hey-o!
Andra Day performed with Ellie Goulding. They sounded very nice. Little Big Town sang “Girl Crush,” a song that was apparently controversial because people thought it was about lesbians when it’s actually about psychotic heterosexual jealousy. They also sounded very nice.
Jackson Browne and the Eagles performed “Take It Easy” in honor of the late Glenn Frey and even snarky millennials stopped live-tweeting for a second, smiled, and thought of their dads. They sounded very nice!

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