by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2017 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Last night I watched the 59th annual Grammy
Awards on CBS — all 3 ½ hours of it, broadcast “live” and actually shown that
way. One good effect of the Internet is that the sorry old practice by which we
got the major awards shows three hours after they actually occurred — the East
Coast media establishment’s constant reminder to us on the West Coast that we
sucked hind tit media-wise — has ended; with the awards results available
online instantly to anyone with a computer and Internet access, there’s no way to
sustain suspense over the outcome except to show the awards in real time. The
Grammy Awards opened with a great performance by Adele of her signature song,
“Hello,” and I give her major points for avoiding any “production.” There were
no pyrotechnics, no laser beams sweeping the stage, no flashing colored lights,
no Cirque du Soleil performers doing their thing over her head — just a stocky
blonde woman (when I first saw Adele on a previous Grammy telecast I fell in
love with her instantly for allowing herself to appear as a “woman of size”
instead of slimming herself down to look like she just got rescued from
Auschwitz) standing on a bare stage, accompanied by an unseen band and the only
other sight being a black-and-white blow-up image of her in real time, as she
poured her heart out and made the song come alive.
There were basically two
main contenders for the big awards — Album of the Year, Record of the Year and
Song of the Year — Adele and Beyoncé, whose big number in the middle of the
show drowned in its own pretensions. It was a medley of three songs that seemed
to center around the concept of motherhood, and indeed Beyoncé was introduced
by her real mother, Toni Knowles (I’m old enough to remember when Beyoncé still
used her last name professionally). The song began with a long speech set to
music — it wasn’t declaimed rhythmically so it can’t really be called a rap —
and then went through about three phases, each more and more pretentious and
dull as Beyoncé traipsed in enough choristers to fill out a Busby Berkeley
number and an already not-very-interesting song just got overwhelmed by the
unwitting silliness. Ironically, when Adele finally won Album of the Year she
gave a tear-stained acceptance speech in which she said she thought Beyoncé had deserved the award for
a great album that had made all her friends, “especially my Black friends,”
feel better about themselves. It’s yet another indication of the vast gulf
between Adele and Beyoncé as both artists and people that Adele’s speeches were
(or at least appeared to be) off the cuff and delivered from the heart, whereas
when Beyoncé won for “Best Urban Contemporary Album” (“urban” in this setting
being code for “Black,” reminding me of Art Hoppe’s satirical column in which a
Black person explains to him that “now they call me a City … When politicians
say, ‘We have to address the problems of our Cities,’ that’s me they’re talking about!”) she read a long speech from
a leather case she opened like a miniature version of one of President Trump’s
executive orders and made the most blatantly political comments of the night.
My only encounters with whatever is on Beyoncé’s Lemonade album have been her performance of the song
“Formation” at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show (it’s supposed to be a song
against police brutality, but, silly me, I had just thought it was called
“Formation” after how a football play starts) and the even more bizarre
production she put on last night, and neither has convinced me that the rest of
the album is worth my time or money. I don’t want to dis Beyoncé — I still
think she turned in a stunning performance as the Diana Ross character in the
2006 film Dreamgirls and she
wasn’t acknowledged for it only because Jennifer Hudson was even more
overwhelming — but her sort of music simply doesn’t speak to me emotionally,
and Adele’s does. (I could probably be accused of racism for saying that, but
nobody who looked at the totality of my music collection and did a ratio of
Black to white artists could possibly make that accusation seriously.) The 2017
Grammy Awards were hosted by James Corden, whom I’d briefly encountered in bits
of his late-late night show (when I could still record shows for later viewing
before the damnable “all-digital” conversion took that away from me — I’m certainly
not going to stay up that late to watch anything “live”!) and whom I regard as
one of the most bizarrely repulsive presences ever put on TV — I wouldn’t mind
him being stocky and ugly if he had any discernible talent, but he isn’t funny,
he isn’t an appealing personality, he isn’t able to make his unappealing
qualities entertaining the way Jackie Gleason did, he’s just a tacky-looking schlub CBS dredged up from under a rock and for some reason
gave a major TV show to. Corden’s funniest moment was when he invited people to
tweet their reactions to the show in real time and said they would be displayed
as they came in — and what came in were a barrage of fake tweets saying how
awful Corden was as well as one purportedly from Donald Trump calling Corden the
“greatest host ever” and saying he was “terrific.” (Whoever wrote the fake
tweet from Trump forgot to end it with an exclamation point; Trump’s 140th
character on his actual tweets is almost always an exclamation point. It’s
true!)
The show didn’t get that
political — there was nothing here comparable to Meryl Streep’s brilliant
evisceration of Trump on the Golden Globes — but there were enough anti-Trump
digs to indicate that the recording business is part of the Great Establishment
of liberals and progressives whom the Trump voters regard as the enemy within
that’s destroying the “real America” and demands the attentions of their Führer to “make America great again.” As usual, the main
interest for me in the Grammy Awards were the performances — though I must say
I was pissed when Maren Morris lost Best New Artist to someone or something
called Chance the Rapper, who made two pretentious acceptance speeches (he also won for Best Rap Album, and
one of the commentators mentioned that his record was only released as an Internet stream, and giving my utter
loathing for the whole idea of streaming technology that just gives me another
reason to hate him) in which he thanked God (award winners who thank God always
irritate me), though when he eventually performed towards the end of the show
he brought on a gospel choir and did a song whose text indicates that he takes
the religion stuff very
seriously; in essence, Chance the Rapper has brought rap back to its origins in
the cadences of Black preaching. Morris did win Best Solo Country Performance and, rather than
do her big song “My Church” (the one I heard her do on a country awards show
and which had me listening with my jaw open at the sheer power and intensity of
what she was singing and the way she was singing it — I still want to see someone sign her to play Janis Joplin in
a biopic before she ages out of the role: she’s got the face and the voice for it!), she did one called “Once” as a
duet with Alicia Keys, both of them singing brilliantly and bringing great soul
moves to the song. Early on in the show The Weeknd and Daft Punk (dressed this
time like dueling Darth Vaders) did a nice song called “I Feel It Coming” (I
wish I still did!) and then Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood did something
called “What If I Fall? (I Won’t Let You).”
Then Ed Sheeran — a British
singer-songwriter who when I first saw him came off as so milquetoast I thought
his name was “Shearing” and wondered if he were any relation to jazz pianist
George Shearing (no) — did a song called “Shape of You” that was O.K. and I
probably would have liked better if his entire accompaniment, other than his
own guitar, hadn’t been provided by a synthesizer called “Chewie II.” (The name
was clearly visible and one wonders if the company that made it had paid
product-placement fees either to Sheeran or CBS.) After that Kelsey Ballerini
(who’s got quite a nice voice even though, as new country artists go, she’s
definitely in the shadow of Maren Morris) and Lukas Graham (who I hadn’t
realized is actually Danish and whose real name is something longer and more
obviously Scandinavian) did the quite nice song “Neverland” that I’d previously
heard on a country show (and which made me compare it to the quite different
“Lost Boy” as two contrasting takes on the Peter Pan mythos; “Lost Boy” romanticizes it and “Neverland” depicts
it as something you grow out of). That was followed by Beyoncé’s bizarre
production and then by a weird gag version of “Sweet Caroline” by James Corden
with John Legend, Jennifer Lopez and Neil Diamond himself, pulled out of the
audience for the occasion. Afterwards Bruno Mars, a micro-talent with a
mega-ego, came out and did one of his hits — I think it’s called “Can I Take Your Time?” — and Little Big
Town did a song called (once again, I’m just guessing at some of these titles)
either “Living a Teenage Dream” or “Don’t Ever Look Back.” That was followed up
by Katy Perry and yet another of the Marley kids, Skip, doing an O.K. song
called “Chained to the Rhythm.” Then came a real surprise treat: Gary Clark,
Jr. and someone introduced as “Stax legend William Bell” did a great version of
Albert King’s hit “Born Under a Bad Sign” — it turned out William Bell wrote that song, and it was a delight to hear some honest
blues in the middle of all the pretension and to see two singers who trusted
themselves and their material to come over without flashing lights or mobs of
choristers!
After that came the Morris-Keys duet and then Adele, who had opened
the show with her own song, did a tribute to George Michael by singing his song
“Fast Love” — only she stopped early on and asked to do it over, and she also
apologized for swearing. My guess is that the show’s producers gave her a
cleaned-up lyric to sing but she either purposely or inadvertently reverted to
Michael’s original. Then came one of those bizarre “Grammy Moment”
collaborations between Lady Gaga and Metallica, which actually came off quite
well even though it sounded to me more like early Siouxsie and the Banshees
than what I think of from either
of those acts; Lady Gaga is a major talent who seemingly can blend with
anybody, from Tony Bennett to Metallica, though the joint performance was hurt
by a technical problem — one could see that Metallica’s lead singer was singing but it took them time to get
his mike working so you could actually hear him (and of course even when his mike was on what he was singing, like heavy-metal lyrics in general,
was almost totally incomprehensible). Then country singer Sturgill Stimpson
(whom I could probably get to like) came on with the horn section from the
Dap-Kings (whose great lead singer, Sharon Jones, was yet another of the music
world’s casualties in 2016) and did “Love Me All Around You” — the song wasn’t
much but Stimpson’s voice was eloquent and the Dap-Kings’ horns elevated it.
Afterwards came an odd Bee Gees tribute with Tori Kelly, Demi Lovato, Audra Day
and Little Big Town doing four songs from their disco period: “Stayin’ Alive,”
“Tragedy,” “How Deep Is Your Love?” and “Night Fever.” The camera showed Barry, the
one remaining Brother Gibb, in the audience, though oddly the show was routined
so that John Travolta made his appearance much earlier instead of introducing
the Bee Gees’ segment, which was where he obviously belonged. (Maybe he didn’t
want the audience reminded of the contrast between what he looked like when he
made Saturday Night Fever and
what he looks like now.) The high point was Day taking “Night Fever” and
turning it into righteous soul.
Then came time for one of the oddest features
of recent Grammy telecasts: an entire song sponsored and paid for as an ad by
Target, featuring Carly Rae Jepsen and Lil Yachty (that’s a rap group) in what
was alleged to be a cover of the old Marvin Gaye-Kim Weston soul classic “It
Takes Two” but had virtually no resemblance to it (at least the last time
Target did one of these it was with Gwen Stefani, a genuine and important
talent). Then there was a tribute to the pioneering rap group A Tribe Called
Quest, one of whose key members was also one of the many 2016 casualties, with
several guest stars whose names meant nothing to me — Busta Rhymes, Consequence
and Anderson.Pauk — though their text was mainly a defense of political rap
against the blind, evil “gangsta” crap that followed it and there was one
section in the middle of the medley (Consequence’s, I think) that was genuinely
moving and lyrical. After that came a tribute to Prince (intriguingly, neither
David Bowie nor Glenn Frey rated tribute segments, but Prince and his white
wanna-be George Michael did — and Bowie won the first Grammys of his career
last night; he literally had to
die to make the grade with the Grammy voters, and I was a bit disappointed that
his widow Iman didn’t show to accept his awards) featuring Bruno Mars, once
again showing off the vast gulf between his micro-talent and Prince’s
mega-talent, and Prince’s old associates in the band The Time. Then the a
cappella group Pentatonix (whom I’d like a
lot better if their Mills Brothers-style instrumental simulations didn’t
include one of a drum machine) did, of all things, the early Jackson Five hit
“1-2-3,” and after Chance the Rapper’s sermon (there’s nothing else to call it)
there was a quite moving in memoriam
segment with John Legend and a white woman whose name I didn’t catch (Cynthia Erivo) doing “God
Only Knows” (whose composer, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, is thankfully
still alive) and doing it beautifully. There wasn’t a big final number — the show just sort of petered
out after they gave the big awards — and overall the 2017 Grammy Awards was the
sort of lumbering spectacle awards shows have turned into lately, but it had
its moments and the contributions of Adele, Maren Morris, Alicia Keys, Gary
Clark, Jr., William Bell and John Legend with Cynthia Erivo were timeless.
