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Monday, February 9, 2009

2009 Grammy's: The Day After


Well, we weren't alone in our disdain for the Grammy Awards show last night. Most of the critics and entertainment commentators are, this morning, calling the show an "unmitigated disaster". We couldn't agree more.

The show had desperation written all over it. In order to try to attract an audience, and more importantly, a demographically-important audience of young people, the show featured a truly sorry line-up of singers, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, The Jonas Brothers, way too many rappers, Katy Perry, Jamie Foxx, (yes, Jamie Foxx!), who we suppose appeal to some segment of a younger generation. And even more horrifying, they paired these lightweights with living legends, i.e. Timberlake with Al Green, The Jonas Brothers with Stevie Wonder, Jamie Foxx with Smokey Robinson and Duke Fakir. It was sad. To say that no one brought down the house would be a monumental understatement. The Baltimore Sun today reports, "Justin Timberlake has no business on the same stage with Al Green." Holla!

There were some nice moments, Jennifer Hudson's emotional performance, Adele winning Best New Artist and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's very deserved win of Album of the Year, (pictured above).

But a few nice moments didn't keep the show from being disjointed and all over the place... a veritable mess. Better luck next year, Grammys!

Oh, and after hearing that Chris Brown was being held for assault of an "unknown woman" last night, and therefore had to back out of his scheduled performance on the show, it's being reported this morning that the woman he assaulted might have actually been his girlfriend, Rihanna, who also dropped out of the show at the last minute. Ouch!

The whining from the Tween Generation has already begun, just like when Diddy whined when he lost a few years back to the soundtrack from "O, Brother Where Art Thou". One blogger said that Plant/Krauss's win was just an example of the Grammy's preference for "age over relevance". Okay, look, you little dumbass, we get it that your understanding of music and music history doesn't reach back further than, oh, say, the year 2000, but if you really think you're going to make an intelligent argument that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's individual careers are not "relevant" to the production of important popular music, well, after we stop laughing, we have to tell you, that's one argument you're going to lose.

We also heard last night, in the wake of Robert Plant's successful trophy haul, that Led Zeppelin had never won a Grammy. We still don't know if this is true, we're trying to look it up, but we also heard that The Who never won a Grammy, either. Wow. We do know that Elvis Presley only won three Grammys, but all for his gospel recordings, none for any of his Pop/Rock records. So all kidding and personal preferences aside, this should probably tell you something about the real validity of a Grammy Award. It's probably best to take it all with a huge grain of salt.

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