Lindsay Zoladz: Larry! Hello. I haven't seen you since the Grammys aired, so I feel like the Ryan Lewis groom to your blushing Macklemore bride. Much to discuss about the night my mom realized for the first time that Lorde is a singer and not "Madonna's daughter with the eyebrows." How did you celebrate Music's Biggest Night™?
Larry Fitzmaurice: Some would say I rang in Music's Biggest Night exactly how our dark Grammy overlords would have wanted me to—sitting in the back of an empty Williamsburg bar & grill, watching it on a projector screen. The tomato soup was too salty, but it had more flavor than most of the telecast (BAZINGA!). Lindsay, I heard your MBN Experience™ was, uh, a bit more eventful. Do share!
LZ: Yes, so, because I cannot resist the promise of elaborate hors d'Oeurves and also the antenna on my TV does not pick up CBS, I ended up at the Recording Academy's New York viewing party at a club in Chelsea called Marquee. To set the scene: As I was waiting in the line to get in, a woman in a fur coat walked up behind me and said, "Why is there a line?" I don't know, sometimes there are lines? It was at that exact moment I realized that my nail polish was chipped.
On the bright side, I walked in right as Beyoncé started "Drunk in Love", and one of my favorite moments of the night was hearing an entire room full of fancy people shout "HOW THE HELL DID THIS SHIT HAPPEN OH BABUH" into the void created by the FCC's inexplicably long Beyoncé bleep. It was almost like being in the "Picasso Baby" video. What did you think of the Bey/Jay performance?
LF: I mean, I'm not going to deny the awesomeness of the performance itself, but my heart sank when the opening moments of the telecast revealed that Bey would be kicking off the show. As usual, there were a lot of potentially boring-to-terrible performances planned this year, and when you kick things off with Beyoncé, you're saying to everyone who's chosen to engage in the self-flagellating activity of watching this goddamn thing, "Things will only get worse from here." It should be noted, though, that I watched the entirety of the pre-telecast, so I sorely needed the burst of energy that Beyoncé and Jay-Z provided.
LZ: Wow, Larry, I can't believe you watched the entire pre-telecast; I'm sorry that you hate yourself. I saw you Instagramming screenshots of Cyndi Lauper and thought for a second, "Aww they are letting Hayley Williams' mom host this, cute."
LF: Cyndi! LL Cool J is obviously a pro at hosting this show at this point—he's endearingly corny, even if our own set drinking game of "drink every time it's unclear if LL's banter is leading into a joke or not" resulted in a high bar tab—but I hereby nominated Cyndi Lauper to host every awards show ever. She was constantly asking the audience how they were doing, rhapsodizing on the wonders of music in general, and flubbing pre-written introductions as if she had just learned how to read the morning of the ceremony. At one point, she began to introduce a musical act that wasn't even scheduled to play at that moment—and when she realized her mistake, she stopped, stumbled, and said "I fucked up" straight into the camera. You can't do THAT on television!
The pre-telecast is actually fascinating because it serves as a great equalizer for all the nominees and recipients of the awards not deemed telecast-worthy to exist on the same "Not Ready for Prime Time" plane—so, yeah, this sentence is probably the only time I'll mention Herb Alpert and Vampire Weekend in the same breath. Speaking of: When Vampy Weeks picked up their Best Alternative Music Album award, Ezra Koenig's speech was standoffishly short ("Thanks a lot. [Gestures to band] You guys wanna say anything else? [Brief pause] Nah, we're good. Thanks!", which made it funnier when, during the MTV red carpet pre-show less than an hour later, Koenig claimed that he had quoted a Bible verse (Corinthians, to be exact) during his speech, the pre-show host taking him completely seriously. That said, the low point was definitely my decision to watch the MTV pre-show (Sway, I can't even with you).
While we're talking about hosts, Lindsay, the event you were at had a special host, I hear...
LZ: It's true, the Recording Academy screening was "hosted" by Entourage: the Movie's Adrian Grenier (YEAH YEAH), though as far as I could tell "hosting" in that context meant "hanging out and posing for iPhone photos"—if only it had meant just that for poor LL too. Anyway, my night involved nervously drinking vodka cranberries and pretending like I fit in. But who cares, can I skip ahead and air a perennial Grammy grievance of mine?
LF: YEAH YEAH!
LZ: So you know how every single year the Grammys end with one of those cock-rock "all star tribute" performances that involves like seven dudes playing rhythm guitar? Has a woman *ever* been allowed to play in one of those, or is there something in the Grammy Constitution prohibiting that? Seriously. Committee members: As a female viewer and a (er, former/super amateur) musician I feel alienated any time you interpret the term "all star" to mean "all men." It tells the young women watching that they shouldn't bother aspiring to greatness. So here, I will make it easy for you and give you a list of artists you should consider calling next year: Annie Clark, Marissa Paternoster, Danielle Haim, Marnie Stern, Carrie Brownstein, Mary Timony, Kaki King, Brittany Howard… also why do people somehow forget that Taylor Swift is a very good guitarist? She was sitting right in the front row, and if they would have invited her up I might have actually watched through the end of the performance, instead of feeling bored and marginalized and deciding to try and beat the coat check line.
OK, back to our regularly scheduled program. Larry, what was your favorite performance of the night? Aside from Daft Punk (we'll get to them), I might have to go with Lorde's hyper-minimal take on "Royals". She's got a unique presence on camera and I always find her absolutely transfixing to watch.
LF: Well, we can take solace that even the producers of the telecast themselves didn't deem this year's dude-bro RAWK-FEST too important (TELL 'EM WHY U MAD, TRENT), but funny you mention the gender divide… save for the Daft Punk collab-a-palooza, two of the strongest and engaging performances of the night came from women with instruments in hand. I'm talking about Taylor Swift's elegiac-yet-whiplash-triggering performance of "All Too Well"—you seriously earned the right to dumb out during Kendrick's performance, Taylor—and Kasey Musgraves taking the stage for "Follow Your Arrow", which found the country singer performing amidst neon cacti that looked as if they were ripped from the window of a Chili's, but triumphing regardless.
LZ: I caught the faintest whiff of Stevie Nicks' Fajita Roundup.
LF: I briefly mentioned Kendrick Lamar and Imagine Dragons' unholy matrimony—good kid, m.A.A.d. shitty?—so let's get down and dirty: Who sucked the most this year? Hard to narrow it down, I know...
LZ: Remember when Kendrick shouted out Imagine Dragons in the "Control" verse? That was trill.
Well, I thought Katy Perry's Evanescence-Video-Directed-by-the-Max-Fischer-Players was a hot mess, but all the fire and sexy witch imagery certainly distracted you from how bad that song is, so... mission accomplished? Also, call me cynical, but everything about that Macklemore performance left a bad taste in my mouth. (Jenn Pelly and I are talking about it in another window right now, and she called it "so hilariously try-hard that it was almost sad to watch." Cosign.)
One theory I've had for a while that really calcified for me last night: Macklemore is the anti-Kanye. His text to Kendrick saying that GKMC should have won Best Rap Album feels like the polar opposite of Kanye's usual award show antics (who can forget when he walked out of the 2004 AMAs when he lost Best New Artist?). But I'd rather our pop stars have the blazingly honest conviction of a Kanye, rather than the smarmy faux-modesty of a Macklemore. As Carrie said, "Bro… isn't your attempt at humility undermined by your decision to post your text on social media in an awkward, self-congratulatory way?" Where was Yeezy last night, and why *wasn't* the (nonexistent) Lou Reed tribute just Kanye performing Metal Machine Music in its entirety? Surely the man himself would have approved.
LF: On the one hand, I understand why Kanye wouldn't bother showing his face at this thing—the Grammys are, simply, the worst, and this year seemed like an especially, endlessly dull telecast comparatively to ones in recent memory—but the lack of surprises provided by genuine attention-grabbers and troublemakers of his ilk contributed to the telecast's deep drag.
That said: Daft Punk! They came, they won, and they even performed this time, too (fuck you, VMAs). What did you think of the Night of the Living Robots, Lindsay?
LZ: Straight up, the Daft Punk/Pharrell/Nile Rogers/Stevie motherfucking Wonder medley was my favorite thing to happen on the Grammys in years. Unlike the Macklemore stunt, it felt loose, organic, and fun... I thought I had reached my "Get Lucky" saturation point months ago, but somehow this morning I was compelled put it on repeat. I'm also surprised at how genuinely triumphant Daft Punk's Album of the Year win felt (like many, I assumed that Macklemore would take the top prize). It was a defibrillator to my cold robot heart: During their acceptance speech (Paul Williams!) my friend and I (who, naturally, had spent most of the telecast making fun of everything) started waxing nostalgic about the first time we heard Homework.
The upset I was secretly hoping for would have been Kendrick nabbing Album of the Year, but honestly we're all winners because we have heard Yoko Ono say the words good kid, m.a.a.d. city. Unexpected highlight of the show: Did America actually fall in love with Yoko Ono last night? Finally? I feel like I have spent half my life defending my Yoko love against the boring, dumb, and generally racist/sexist "lol she broke up the Beatles" world view, but on Twitter at least I could feel the tides shifting. (If last night was the first time in your life you considered the possibility that Yoko Ono actually rules, you should read Lisa Carver's book Reaching Out With No Hands. It's really good!)
LZ: Any final thoughts, Larry?
LF: I have no personal investment in any awards that I'm not receiving myself (#factsonly), so I tend to approach the Grammys—and every award show, by extension—from a Russell Crowe-esque viewpoint of "Am I not entertained?" Like an irresponsible motorist, I'm in it for the car wrecks, so I was hoping for some truly terrible shit a la Mark Foster trying to sing "California Girls" with eternal villain Mike Love last year, but despite the potential for eternal suckitude—Robin Thicke and Chicago! Kendrick Lamagine Dragons! Metallica, period!—the lowlights were simply mediocre to the point of total safety (Katy Perry's amazingly trashy "Rap game Six Flags Fright Fest" stage setup aside). By my count, the most engagingly horrible performance was the Pepsi Grammys Halftime Show commercial (featuring Wale, naturally)—and that was a fucking commercial.
Bottom line, I am a masochist when it comes to media consumption (I'll show you my ticket stub for The Devil's Due to prove it), so I look forward to watching the Grammys again next year and every year until I decide to smother myself with Pharrell's giant hat.
LZ: I am left with only a few lingering questions—what do Pat Smear and Paul McCartney talk about? does Ryan Lewis speak?—and an overwhelming sense of contentment at the fact Queen Latifah is now ordained. Because Music's Biggest Night Is Always Full of Surprises™, I am now engaged to Turtle from "Entourage", and the Queen will be presiding over our wedding.
LF: YEAH YEAH.