| Music really helped a lot of us get through the pandemic. So, shoutout to everybody who's in here today because a lot of these songs really pushed us all the way through. | | |
| | | Two of Grammy's biggest winners, one a little in awe of the other: Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion, Los Angeles, March 14, 2021.
(Cliff Lipson/CBS/Getty Images) |
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| | | “Music really helped a lot of us get through the pandemic. So, shoutout to everybody who's in here today because a lot of these songs really pushed us all the way through.” | |
| | Grammy Thee Stallion
My favorite moment of a better than usual but still flawed GRAMMYS was MEGAN THEE STALLION, looking genuinely shocked and overwhelmed, walking up with BEYONCÉ for her second acceptance speech of the night. "First of all," she starts. She takes a breath, opens her mouth and nothing comes out. A loss for words made literal. A pop star who just can't handle it, if only for a moment—and, oh God, she's standing next to Beyoncé. When she was a little girl, she finally tells us, she wanted to be the rap Beyoncé. "My mama would always be like, 'Megan, what would Beyoncé do?' And I'm always, like, 'You know what? What would Beyoncé do but let me make it a little ratchet.'" Beyoncé, who no one thought was going to show up Sunday, is now at her protégé's side, beaming with pride and happiness. In a show designed for intimacy, with a tiny, socially distanced audience of nominees in a tent dotted with circular tables that seemed a little more GOLDEN GLOBE-y than Grammy, and with performers on stages set up in a JOOLS HOLLAND circle so they were basically playing to each other (except when they were faking it by editing in pre-taped performances), this was one of the most intimate, and seemingly real, moments of all. All the producers had to do was let it play out and all the writers had to do was stop writing. Note to future awards shows... Megan, with three Grammys including Best New Artist and a centerpiece performance that started solo and ended with CARDI B, was the big winner, if you ask me, of a night with decidedly split results. She was a gracious and exuberant one. Four women won the top four awards. The Grammys tried hard to make Beyoncé the big winner but came up short in a way that betrayed one of the show's most deeply ingrained, longstanding issues. On a night in which she became the winningest woman in Grammy history, with presenters making big to-do's of #27 (she's tied for the most!) and #28 (she's all alone now!), voters shut her out of the top awards, as they always do. In 21 years, Beyoncé has won exactly one major award (Song of the Year in 2010) and 27 genre and specialty awards. We love you, the historical record says, as long as you stand over there. The optics are exactly that bad, and there's a reason calls for Black artists to boycott the show get a little louder every year... Pop fans have had another reason to abandon the Grammys, or at least turn off their TVs, and the producers addressed that one head-on Sunday night. In an almost shocking rebuke to Grammy's stodgy past, the performances showcased radio pop, radio hip-hop, radio R&B and radio country (unless you want to discount the radio country that country radio refuses to play), to the exclusion of everything else. Many of the performances are on the Grammys homepage. Some, like HAIM's close-harmony, close-quartered rendition of "THE STEPS," felt "tastefully small," to quote the Washington Post's CHRIS RICHARDS, "as if pop’s A-list had convened for a battle of the bands at the local high school." A handful, like LIL BABY's elaborately staged performance of "THE BIGGER PICTURE," were searingly political. As an attempt at making the show younger and more culturally relevant, it was spectacularly successful. This was the first Grammy show, possibly ever, that felt fully current—unless you aren't a pop fan, in which case you may have felt left out. An overcorrection. There's plenty of current, youthful, relevant—and good—jazz and blues and Americana and what the Academy now calls "global music" that could be worked into the nearly four-hour mix. Some of it was even nominated. (Some of it was in fact featured on the internet-only pre-show, but that doesn't count, not just because "internet" but also because "pre.") Imagine, say, AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE or CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH on a stage facing HARRY STYLES or the BLACK PUMAS next year. For like three minutes here or three minutes there, to connect the musical dots. Be the rainbow you want to see... I loved Megan Thee Stallion's little nod to old-school, old-people gramophone entertainment in her performance of "SAVAGE": a tap-dance interlude... The other women at the top of the awards podium: TAYLOR SWIFT, who became the first woman to win Album of the Year three times (her only peers in that category are now FRANK SINATRA, STEVIE WONDER and PAUL SIMON). H.E.R., whose Song of the Year win for "I CAN'T BREATHE" felt inevitable in a good and righteous way. And BILLIE EILISH, who did her best to apologize for winning the final award of the night, Record of the Year, over Megan, falling just short of refusing the Grammy and handing it over. A few hours earlier, during the pre-telecast, JOANIE LEEDS won a Best Children's Music Album Grammy over only one other nominee because three others who had been nominated did in fact refuse, demanding the Recording Academy de-list them. If you don't want the Grammy, you don't have to accept the Grammy... I haven't mentioned the all-women country mini-set led off by MICKEY GUYTON singing "BLACK LIKE ME," one of 2020's great songs, which Nashville has been (not so) weirdly unwelcoming to. The entire set seemed a message to the Grammys' country awards show counterparts. If you can't entirely fix your own show, maybe you can fix someone else's?... And finally, I've made a mini Twitter career out of cataloging the omissions in the show's annual "in memoriam" segment. There were many this year, as usual, but the one that really baffled and saddened me was singer RILEY GALE of Texas thrash band POWER TRIP, who died at age 34 in August. The band was nominated this year for its first-ever Grammy, which could have been a heartwarming bittersweet coda to a celebrated metal career (it lost, during the pre-show, to BODY COUNT). And then they weren't going to even mourn him? Cold.
Rest in Peace
Senegalese mbalax singer THIONE SECK, who sang with ORCHESTRA BAOBOB in the 1970s and went on to a long, celebrated solo career... CARMEL QUINN, an Irish singer who spent decades in American TV, theater and cabarets... SALLY GROSSMAN, a legendary Woodstock, N.Y, music figure who ran BEARSVILLE RECORDS and the recording studio of the same name, and who built the BEARSVILLE THEATER. History, and headline writers, will remember her as the "Lady in Red" on the cover of BOB DYLAN's BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME and the wife of his manager ALBERT GROSSMAN.
A Programming Note
MusicREDEF is taking the next couple days off for some post-Grammys spring cleaning. We'll be back in your inbox Thursday morning.
| | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | | Megan Thee Stallion, Taylor Swift win big on a Grammy night that felt tastefully small | | by Chris Richards | | Musicians performed for other musicians, sizing each other up and nodding along. It was as if pop’s A-list had convened for a battle of the bands at the local high school. | |
| | The Culture Warped Pop, for Good | | by Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding | | Our digitized world hasn't just changed how we listen to music. It changed the music itself. | |
| | With NFTs, Musicians See a Way to Finally Take Control | | by Max Mertens | | NFTs are tearing the art and tech worlds apart, but some musicians are exploring their potential as an alternative to labels and streaming services. | |
| | From Soul Train to Beyoncé: the joy of black performance in America | | by Hanif Abdurraqib | | In "A Little Devil in America," Hanif Abdurraqib set out to celebrate black artists across music, dance, comedy and more, who succeeded even when their own country refused to honour them. | |
| | The Song Manager: Hipgnosis’ Nick Jarjour Sees a Financially Fruitful Future for Hit Rights Holders | | by Geoff Mayfield | | "Think about Michael Jackson's stake in music publishing," says Nick Jarjour, global head of song management for Hipgnosis. "How much would his half of Sony/ATV have been worth if we were using today's valuations?" | |
| | How SXSW Transformed a 280,000-Person Festival Into a Virtual Extravaganza | | by Dan Solomon | | With no long lines, no traffic, and no parties, South by Southwest is going to look a lot this different this year. Here’s how organizers pulled it off. | |
| | A conversation with Willie Nelson: Austin icon talks about new album, book, SXSW and more | | by Peter Blackstock | | As he prepares for his first-ever SXSW keynote, Willie Nelson talks about his new album, a new book, being ready to get on the road again, and more. | |
| | Selena fans wanna know: Where was the Grammys tribute? | | by Suzy Exposito | | Hopes were high when the Recording Academy honored the Tejano singer with a Lifetime Achievement Award. But after Sunday night’s Grammys telecast, Selena fans felt baited and switched. | |
| | Behind the scenes of the online music battle series Verzuz | | by Kelefa Sanneh | | When the pandemic shut down live concerts, a new online music battle series, with artists like Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle going head-to-head, went viral. | |
| | How VR Fitness Apps Like Supernatural Could Change The Music Industry | | by Jason Lipshutz | | With a new UMPG deal unlocking ''hundreds of thousands'' of tracks, the virtual reality platform is betting that the future of fitness involves big hits and headsets. | |
| | | SOPHIE’s Vision of the Future | | by Justin Curto | | A wake for the forward-thinking pop producer, featuring family, friends, collaborators, and followers. | |
| | Thulani Davis and the Secret History of Women Writing Album Liner Notes | | by Daphne A. Brooks | | Since its inception in 1964, the Grammy for best album notes has been awarded to just three women. Davis, who won in 1993 for an Aretha Franklin boxed set, was the first. | |
| | With A Long-Awaited Shot At Freedom, Mac Phipps Has His Eyes On The Future | | by Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden | | Last month, the rapper was recommended for clemency after serving 21 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. Now he tells NPR about his time behind bars and his hope for life outside. | |
| | At Tonight’s Grammy Awards, We Celebrate — Then, as the Weeknd Snub Shows, It’s Time to Fix Them | | by Jem Aswad | | One thing that is not different this year is scandal. | |
| | The Secret Committees | | by Bob Lefsetz | | Blame Jethro Tull. | |
| | How many studies into music’s gender imbalance need to happen before things change? | | by Jenessa Williams | | We all know how it goes by now. A big report comes out, citing some damning evidence that reveals that there is still a long way to go if we are to achieve racial or gender equality. It gets picked over on Twitter by the creative industries, people citing 'solidarity' and retweeting the graphs. | |
| | Banished 'Witches' Sing Of Their Pain -- And Their Dreams | | by Aaron Cohen | | In a new recording, women accused of witchcraft in Ghana - and forced to leave their homes - created songs that tell who they are, how they have suffered and what their hopes are. | |
| | New Orleans' St. Augustine High School Marching Band, the self-proclaimed 'Best Band in the Land' | | by Sharyn Alfonsi and 60 Minutes | | Sharyn Alfonsi reports on the band that desegregated Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans and is now playing through the pandemic. | |
| | With One Full-Time Jazz Club Left, D.C.'s Music Community Mourns | | by Eliza Berkon | | The city’s jazz clubs, many of which closed pre-pandemic, have grown even more scarce after Sotto, Twins, and Alice’s Jazz and Cultural Society shuttered. | |
| | Monty Luke on BLM, climate change & making the catalogue of Black Electronic Music | | by Terry Matthew | | "We are here. We're not going anywhere. It's important that people remember that." | |
| | Gang of Four changed the way punk sounded and what it could say. A new box set reveals the peak of their power | | by Andy Beta | | “We didn’t sound like anybody else,” says singer Jon King. A new box set finds the band’s earliest albums have kept their original thrills. | |
| | From Voder To OVox: A History Of Vocal Synthesis | | by Adam Douglas | | In the first installment of a two-part story, we look at the evolution of vocal synthesis, from primitive speech-mimicking machines to modern software vocoders. | |
| | | | Music of the day | | "Shameika" | | Fiona Apple | | Grammy winner for Best Rock Performance (and Apple's "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" won the Alternative Music Album award). | |
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Grammy winner for Best Rock Performance (and Apple's "Fetch the Bolt Cutters" won the Alternative Music Album award). | | Winner of the Grammy for Best Music Film. |
| | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” | | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator |
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