As he closed the 68th Grammy Awards telecast, Trevor Noah thanked CBS and the Recording Academy for a hosting gig he said felt more like being a music fan and less like doing a job.
I guess that’s the vibe Noah and CBS were going for on Sunday night. It was less a curated and guided telecast with a host steering the proceedings with wit and control, and more Noah acting like a kid who won a ticket to the Grammys and was then abruptly handed a microphone and told to vamp for 10 minutes.
Nobody is going to come away from the Grammys telecast remembering any of Noah’s monologue speech, because there was no monologue speech. There were barely any jokes. It was really just Trevor Noah running around the floor at the arena formerly known as the Staples Center gushing about the talent in a VERY small portion of the audience. Really, Noah got to, like, three tables — enough time to shake a few famous people’s hands and say, “Are you kidding me?” seemingly a few dozen times. It was enthusiastic, chummy and thoroughly vapid, but if the point was for absolutely nobody in the audience to feel even slightly offended or amused, he achieved that goal.
This was Noah’s sixth and, he insists, final time hosting the Grammys, and this will not be the Trevor Noah performance anybody remembers. Noah’s hosting run saw the Grammys through a volatile time, including a largely outdoors 2021 show impacted by COVID. Trevor Noah has been a good Grammys host, the right man for an assortment of difficult moments. In what is, for many people, another difficult moment, somebody decided that what the circumstances demanded was a well-dressed man fanboying over Justin Bieber and Jelly Roll.
And the truth, of course, is that for many viewers, Trevor delivered exactly what they craved: a hollow, cheery escape from everything happening on the news, an insulated celebration of superficiality that was then punctured by the awards and their recipients.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Nikki Glaser hosted the Golden Globes and gave a sharp, often cleverly political speech, which set the table for a telecast in which every subsequent presenter and winner — however topical and pointed their movies or shows — pretended that the ballroom at the Beverly Hilton was the real world and the rest of the real world didn’t exist.
Sunday’s Grammys telecast went the opposite way. Noah got up and talked about Bieber’s new baby, Jamie Foxx’s love of pickleball, and everybody’s individual fashion and beauty brands. It’s one thing to not be political. Sure, I want things to be political. If you don’t? Bully for you. But in lieu of political, I’d have settled for “funny” or “purposeful” or “not bothering to waste 10 minutes and just starting the show.” This was none of those. It was just…enthusiastic.
Presumably somebody felt that if Noah set a benignly bland tone, maybe everybody else would do the same.
That was not the way things went. Whether it was Billie Eilish getting in a bleeped “Fuck ICE” or Jelly Roll thumping a Bible like a face-tatted Elmer Gantry and saying Jesus is for everybody, Sunday’s winners had a lot on their collective minds.
“I guess I want to say I’m up here as the granddaughter of an immigrant,” said best new artist winner Olivia Dean. “I’m a product of bravery and I think those people deserve to be celebrated.”
The man of the night, the man of the month, was Bad Bunny. Next weekend’s Super Bowl halftime act, who many people will still try to claim isn’t a big enough star for that honor, won album of the year and gave his speech largely in Spanish. Or should I say his SECOND speech, because Bad Bunny also won for best best música urbana album, and without resorting to obscenities, he made his point clearly, declaring: “ICE out.”
He continued, “We’re not savages. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”
He urged people to fight hate with love, a message that I’m betting will get lost in some quarters — quarters that won’t be pleased with a two-week grand coronation of Bad Bunny, who was already a very American icon.
Bad Bunny did not, however, perform at the Grammys. As he explained to Trevor multiple times, his Super Bowl contract prohibited anything that would take the shine off of next Sunday’s event.
Fortunately, the Grammys didn’t lack for showcase performances.
There were ultra-elaborate set pieces.
Sabrina Carpenter flirted and pranced her way around an airport set, with an endearingly playful version of “Manchild” that included call-and-response and a dance break in which she executed moves alongside baggage handlers, a doctor, a priest, a magician and a UPS delivery man. If you told me that Sabrina Carpenter was putting together a Village People for the 21st Century, I just might believe you.
Tyler, the Creator, with an assist from Oscar winner Regina King, did a two-song performance of “Thought I Was Dead” and “Sugar on My Tongue,” with sports cars, a gas station set and a full-on stage explosion that left him face down in the crowd with smoke coming off of his body. Did I follow the narrative? Not really. Something about keeping yourself moving forward and not falling back into old, destructive patterns? Regardless, it was entertaining and impressively scaled.
The producers tried to achieve scale with the eight-part best new artist “medley,” which wasn’t really a medley at all. It was really eight ultra-quick performances poorly wedged together and drawing bizarre contrasts between the performers, who were there to contribute flash and sexiness (Addison Rae); aggressive and impressive choreography (Katseye); and real musical (The Marías, Leon Thomas) and vocal (Lola Young, Olivia Dean) chops. And I remain convinced that Sombr is some science-fiction experiment in which every male star of Stranger Things got their DNA scrambled and then put on a sparkling suit.
There were exhibitions of wild showmanship.
Bruno Mars performed not once, but twice, collaborating with Rosé on the show-opening “APT” and then with The Hooligans on “I Just Might.” Mars’ throwback entertainment is always lively and he always teams up with interesting people.
Lady Gaga reframed the classic Emily Dickinson poem to declare that she, in fact, is the thing with feathers, wearing a birdcage on her head. I’ve been told she was dressed in vintage Alexander McQueen, but I was too distracted by the nauseating camerawork to really get into it.
The contrast came from Justin Bieber, who performed “Yukon” stripped-down — musically and, well, in his silk boxers — and intense. The camera only left him for the occasional shot of an approving Hailey Bieber. I am not, as a rule, a Justin Bieber fan. This was an impressive performance.
But the show’s peak came as the telecast was nearing its home stretch, with a three-part consecutive In Memoriam tribute that escalated astonishingly well.
Reba McEntire, Brandy Clark and Lukas Nelson were very good on “Trailblazer,” both musical and respectfully low-key. But then Duff McKagan, Slash, Chad Smith and Andrew Watt, accompanied on vocals by Post Malone, came out and blew things up with a pyrotechnic cover of “War Pigs” in tribute to Ozzy Osbourne. The Osbourne family, in the crowd, was clearly moved. I was not moved. I was just impressed. It was a show without much rock, but for those five minutes, the Grammys rocked.
Then finally, we got what Noah had been teasing as a tribute to D’Angelo and Roberta Flack from Lauryn Hill. Talk about underpromising and overdelivering. Sure, Hill was there and when she was joined by Wyclef Jean on the Fugees’ version of “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” it was a highlight. But the tribute also figured Jon Batiste, John Legend, Chaka Khan, as well as the lesser known Bilal and October London, who threatened to steal the show. I’d have just rolled the credits after this one. (I also would have provided chyrons identifying all of the performers, which the directors did for most of the night’s acts, but not this one.)
Instead, we got the strange and awkward scene in which Cher was announced as presenting record of the year. She came out. Everybody stood and cheered. She started to present, but Noah came out and handed her a lifetime achievement award and she transitioned into a speech and then started to leave, before Noah brought her back out to do what she was supposed to have done in the first place. Then she partially misread the title of the winning song, “Luther,” as Luther Vandross. It’s hard to know which pieces of confusion could have been prevented and by whom, but the energy was sucked out of the room. Even a great performance by Clipse couldn’t quite get the mood back.
I wish there had been some way to close the show with the tributes, since Brian Wilson and Sly Stone deserved more than canned video salutes, but the Grammy producers have historically struggled with end-of-telecast momentum. So the show started with a cheerful fizzle and ended 30 minutes after it peaked, but there was ample entertainment and passion in the middle.
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