Kendrick Lamar lost to Daft Punk. Beyoncé lost to Beck. Kendrick Lamar lost to Taylor Swift. Beyoncé lost to Adele. The Grammys are a scripted event: a black artist releases an ambitious album that defines its year and embodies the deliberate craft the Grammys supposedly reward; votes are cast largely by suits whose sole form of sustenance is industry politics as a drip-feed into their ears; someone else wins.
It's tempting to say the Grammys are getting better at this, but they're not. (The trend also dovetails nicely with the trend of hip-hop and R&B being shut out from Top 40 radio despite dominating the charts and the zeitgeist, not to mention certain real-world regressive political undercurrents.) If the Grammys of yesteryear took place today, it's easy to imagine The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill losing to Madonna’s Ray of Light or Speakerboxx/The Love Below losing to the White Stripes’ Elephant. And in 2017, a strong year for albums—the entire Urban Contemporary category alone would make a fine Album of the Year slate—the voters couldn't find anything more compelling for the main event than Justin Bieber, post-peak Drake, Sturgill Simpson, and a particularly cursory Adele. While 21 defined the zeitgeist and carried the industry in sales for two years, 25 sold well and didn't linger. 25 is the “Set Fire to the Rain” to 21's “Rolling in the Deep.”
Is anyone surprised? No one is surprised. Frank Ocean, who publicly boycotted the Grammys despite having two major albums and a potential Prince tribute in him, was not surprised. Beyoncé's team wasn't surprised; Tina Knowles prefaced Beyoncé's performance with a quasi-acceptance speech on motherhood, and Bey accepted her award for Best Urban Contemporary Album with the solemnity of the Grammys' final act, as if she knew the actual final act would be Adele complaining about being played off (with “Cranes in the Sky,” no less) before delivering two straight Macklemore apologies. It's hard to feel bad, exactly, for Adele; she was in an impossible situation, and she tried. But it's nevertheless symbolic in the worst ways that Adele made a big production about how Beyoncé really deserved the Album of the Year award, broke the original award in two, then kept half of it anyway.
Streaks Continued by Beyoncé
Beyoncé, following up her Venusian photoshoot, staged“Love Drought” and “Sandcastles” inside a lush bower of fertility goddess rites, Marian imagery, Warsan Shire's poetry, and invocations of “a curse being lifted,” a message of healing that, in 2017, felt sorely needed. In doing so, she continued several streaks:
Being the one person on a major awards show who designs her performance like she's on a major awards show: More alluring than the Weeknd delivering come-ons from a cruise-ship ice sculpture, more artistic than Ed Sheeran marveling about hooking up at the pub while the camera marvels at the fact that he's musical enough to use gear, more in conversation with the greats than Adele apologizing through George Michael or Bruno Mars dressing up as Prince. Stray petals from her performance remained on the Grammy stage the entire night, a reminder of the chasm of pomp and execution between her and basically every other performer.
Being an actual feminist: As per usual, Beyoncé’s stage imagery highlighted a bevy of women of color. Even without the digital crowds, Beyoncé's set featured more women than every other performer of the night (particularly puzzling on a night with multiple Prince tributes in potential need for protégées) and, amid the catastrophe of the Muslim ban, showcased the words of a poet of Somali heritage.
Being someone who reads the comments: Ever since Beyoncé dropped “Survivor” in response to jokers comparing the then-revolving Destiny’s Child lineup to the reality show, Beyoncé has made art from the bottom half of the internet, and so she does again. Leaning so hard into the fertility aesthetic is a massive subtweet of the birther rumors that plagued the tabloids last time around, designed for (and, as you'll probably find, successful at) getting under their skin.
Two Other Great Performances
A Tribe Called Quest, Consequence, Anderson .Paak, and Busta Rhymes continued the Grammys' weird, largely unacknowledged streak of good hip-hop spots, while providing the one good tribute (“Award Tour,” dedicated to the late Phife Dawg) and the one unquestionably resonant political statement. “I want to thank President Agent Orange for your unsuccessful attempt at the Muslim ban,” taunted Busta Rhymes amid a staging of protest signs and passports, while Q-Tip ended the set with a clarion “RESIST! RESIST! RESIST!”
Chance the Rapper, supported by gospel fixture Kirk Franklin and Tyler Perry fixture Tamela Mann, delivered a mix from Coloring Book while dedicating his award to Chicago, independent artists, and God. The heartland may, but won't, note Chance led his set with worship standard “How Great Is Our God,” the night's sole nod to religion.
Actual Political Statements
Busta Rhymes: Aforementioned.
Paris Jackson: “We could really use this kind of excitement at a Pipeline protest. Hashtag #NoDAPL!”
Laverne Cox: “Everyone google Gavin Grimm.”
What More Typically Passed for Political Statements
Katy Perry, performing a version of her Sia polemic “Chained to the Rhythm” hastily arranged to emphasize its Max Martinized undercarriage and de-emphasize its Swedish reggae, wore a white pantsuit and an armband reading PERSIST—which might have been a nod to the past week’s rallying cry around Elizabeth Warren, except with the view from the stage it might as well have read SISTER or WRIST. She ended her spot in front of a large clip art Constitution, the only legible part of which was “We the People.” (Worth comparing: Beyoncé famously closed her VMA set in front of a giant “FEMINIST” set piece three years ago; A Tribe Called Quest did their own substantive “We the People” just hours later.)
After limpid commentary on how George Michael's music “excludes no one,” Adele's transformation of “Fastlove” into a Kate McKinnon's-“Hallelujah” dirge that makes casual sex sound like a death march, her subsequent fucking it up, starting over and, groundhog-like, sentencing the world to an endless winter of piano malaise. Plus George finally getting an apology... for Adele making a swear.
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences president Neil Portnow reading the room a bit poorly: using “America the Beautiful” as a lobbying spot for updating music laws and a kickoff point for a lecture on the need for unity among both sides, as his stage makeup demonstrated unity with the other president.
James Corden failing to descend stairs: a dig at the stair phobia of our nation's own disappointing TV host? Presenter Gina Rodriguez’s invocation of “women standing together”? Ed Sheeran wearing his branded HOAX shirt: a dig at fake news? Who can be sure what’s political anymore?
Achievements in Musical Cosplay
The role of Prince was played by Bruno Mars in literal Prince cosplay (though Blue Ivy wore it best), demonstrating his greatest strength and greatest flaw: his ability to turn any genre or artist into a Vegas jukebox revue. On the one hand, he probably is the one performer at the moment best suited to play Prince. On the other hand, the performance took the prompt “Bruno Mars doing ‘Let's Go Crazy’” and ran exactly nowhere with it besides the inevitable: an imitation of Prince as an “Uptown Funk” imitation of himself.
Lady Gaga has become, prematurely, a tribute act to herself. The Super Bowl set the clock back to The Fame, and her set with Metallica reset it to Born This Way, if everything that sounded like Ladytron was swapped out for everything that sounded like Lita Ford. It almost worked! Though, as we've learned this year, camera angles are important. What looks like Gaga/Hetfield fire up close looks, upon zooming out, more like mic failures and pseudo-moshers stumbling around like wasted zombies. Which is why the show clung to the close-ups.
The role of soul was played, largely, by country artists, wavering somewhere between “a welcome reminder of the roots of a genre mired in rock bluster and tailgate wastedness” and “a handy way to cut off the supposed breakout singles of Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini.” The role of rock was played by Ed Sheeran singing a Rihanna castoff. The Weeknd cosplayed the ’80s. Bruno Mars cosplayed Boyz II Men in the ’90s. Twenty One Pilots cosplayed pantsless Blink-182. If it wasn’t for Chance mentioning SoundCloud, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was.
Carcrash Karaoke, from Least Wanted to Even Less Wanted
Little Big Town introducing Katy Perry via angling for a future Dixie Chicks “Daddy Lessons”-ification of “Teenage Dream.”
Pentatonix singing the Jackson 5 for very little reason.
James Corden starting yet another frat-house singalong of “Sweet Caroline.”
Reminders That We Live in Alternate Reality and Somewhere Out There, Unreachable, Is Actual Reality
Katharine McPhee and the Chainsmokers accepting David Bowie's award for Best Rock Song in approximately five seconds.
Lady Gaga getting maybe 75 percent of the way into a Miley twerk moment before having a sudden moment of clarity.
Leonard Cohen going largely unacknowledged, which doesn’t sound so surprising until you realize it means a major awards show passed on an opportunity to do a tearful “Hallelujah.”
It taking an hour and thirty minutes for the host of a major awards show to plead the audience to use its hashtag, then it never being mentioned again.
The founder of World Star making the tribute reel.