Best: Alicia Keys’ capable hosting
Hosting awards shows is a risky and thankless business—and despite all that’s gone wrong for Oscar hosts over the past few years, the Grammys are perhaps the hardest gig of them all. Given the behind-the-scenes chaos that has engulfed the Recording Academy, so many things could have gone wrong for host Alicia Keys. An overeager exuberance could have felt alienating to the portion of the music business calling for more diversity and accountability, while skepticism could have weighed down the entire night (see: this year’s Golden Globes). And that’s all before the news of Kobe Bryant’s death broke on Sunday afternoon, sending the Staples Center into a stunned sense of collective mourning.
But Keys rose to the occasion, handling an extremely awkward situation with flexibility and poise. Her impromptu a capella performance of “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” with Boyz II Men was a cathartic moment, and a perfect way to handle a tribute that could have dissolved into insincere treacle. (The performance also continued the song’s powerful legacy as a tribute anthem: Barrio Boyzz played it after Selena’s death, and Usher performed it for Aaliyah).
Keys was equally comfortable commanding the stage as she was doing crowd work; she also nailed a conversational performance of her new song, “Underdog.” After her successful second stint, she’s quickly becoming to the Grammys what Billy Crystal was to the Oscars.
Best: Tyler the Creator’s fiery performance
Grammy performances often skew staid, with rising stars asked to sandpaper over their rough edges and modulate their aesthetic toward that of a much older one-time collaborator. But Tyler the Creator refused to do so, forcing the telecast to go along with his much more alienating and iconoclastic vision.
Instead of moving onto Boyz II Men’s throwback turf, Tyler let them sing the rich harmonies on “Earfquake” and then put them on top of a terrifying, burning set of houses while he gasped and wheezed through “New Magic Wand,” one of the best songs on his album Igor. His spastic dancing, the glitching camera work, his gravelly sweet-sour singing and the terrifying set, perhaps a nod to the devastating fires in both Los Angeles and Australia—all reinforced the idea that he’s not just one of the world’s best rappers and producers but one of his generation’s sharpest auteurs.
He also gave two memorable speeches following his win for Best Rap Album—one onstage, in which he admonished the crowd for clapping too much and confidently steamrolled over the incidental music—and one backstage, in which he expressed frustration about the Grammys’ ghettoization of hip-hop. “Half of me feels like the rap nomination was a backhanded compliment—like oh, my little cousin wants to play the game, let’s give him the unplugged controller so he can shut up and feel good about it,” he said. It was a pointed and all-too-accurate rejoinder.
Best: Ariana Grande’s powerhouse medley
After disparaging the Grammys last year, Ariana Grande showed the Academy what they were missing by delivering a versatile powerhouse performance of cuts from her album Thank U, Next. She glided through her pink monochrome set with a cheeky ease, pairing old-school demure glamour with bombastic twerking and graceful full-throated vocal runs with effortless rapid-fire trap cadences.
Best: Redemption narratives
The Grammys love a good comeback story, and they gave the stage to two heartfelt and mesmerizing ones this year: Tanya Tucker and Demi Lovato. Tucker, a country recluse who was first nominated in 1973 and last nominated in 1994, looked a bit shellshocked to be on the Grammy stage, but handled her performance of “Bring My Flowers Now” with a steely grit.
An hour later, Lovato brought down the house with the debut of “Anyone,” written after several years of struggle with bulimia, addiction and bipolar disorder and an overdose in 2018. Lovato stumbled out of the gate, asking her pianist to restart the song after a few bars. But the slip-up—after which a single tear rolled down her right cheek—only reinforced the song’s startling emotional nakedness, which she delivered with mounting force. “A hundred million stories / And a hundred million songs / I feel stupid when I sing / Nobody’s listening to me,” she sang. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Worst: The incessant bleeping
And the Grammy for most frequent performer at this year’s show goes to… whoever controls the bleeping. It seemed like during every other performance or speech, the broadcast fell silent altogether, completely halting momentum and goodwill. To kick off the night, Lizzo was bleeped; so were Ariana Grande, Nas, Aerosmith, Gary Clark Jr. and Billie Eilish, and then Eilish again. I know we’re on CBS. But could they not have worked out substitutions, or like, sent out a memo about profanity before the show?
Worst: So many no-shows
In practically every award category, there was a conspicuous static portrait filling one fifth (or one eighth) of the screen. No Lady Gaga, no Taylor Swift, no Dave Chappelle, no Young Thug, no Beyoncé, no Bon Iver. Their no-shows just reinforced the idea that many of the most important people in music don’t really care about the show anymore.
Worst: Crowd Diversity
Best: “Old Town Road”
While this year’s Grammys clearly needed to include the biggest song of all time, the song presented something of a logistical challenge. How could one stage hold so many distinct personalities, from Lil Nas to BTS to Mason Ramsey, and fold them into one cohesive whole?
