67th Annual Grammy Awards (Fulwell 73 Productions, Grammy Studios, National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, aired February 2, 2025)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Sunday, February 2) the 67th annual Grammy Awards took place in Hollywood at an arena named after a cryptocurrency (barf!). It was hosted by Trevor Noah, who began the event by saying that in light of the recent big fires in Los Angeles it had been touch and go for a few days whether the Grammy Awards would even happen at all. In the event, the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), hosts of the Grammy Awards, decided to turn it into a combination awards show and telethon, with one of those disgusting QR codes at the bottom of the screen (those horrible things that look like very bad miniature black-and-white reproductions of paintings by Mondrian) which you could photograph with your smartphone to open a Web site through which you could make a donation. Noah also tried to guilt-trip members of today’s super-rich (you know, the ones who brought you Donald Trump 2.0) sitting in the luxury balconies and looking down at the rest of us like the gods in human form they are (or at least pretend to be) into making some big-ticket donations. They ended up raising $7 million total from people for whom $7 million is pocket change. The show opened with a duo called Dawes, consisting of brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, announcing that both the home they grew up in and the one they were living in now, complete with their home recording studio and all their instruments, had been destroyed in the blazes. They were joined by an all-star lineup including John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Brittany Howard and St. Vincent, for – of all things – Randy Newman’s song “I Love L.A.”! Both Charles and I can remember when this song was considered a negative one, a parody of L.A.’s affectations by one of music’s master humorists, but here it was being offered as a unique and sincere tribute to the city in its hour of need.

Then Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas (whom I’ve sometimes referred to as the Richard Carpenter of today: the brother willing to step back from the limelight and promote the career of his superstar sister) did a quite lovely song called “Birds of a Feather” on a set representing nature. I’m sure much of it was process-screened in, but they certainly looked like they were playing among at least some dried plants and vegetation. I liked that, especially by contrast to the high-tech numbers I was expecting (and dreading) later. After that Sabrina Carpenter (not, as far as I know, any relation to Richard and Karen) did a modernized version of a big-band number on her hit song “Espresso,” which seems to be about a woman who’s working late and needs the strongest caffeinated beverages she can find to keep going. She performed in the obligatory spangled white hot pants and matching top – both she and her dancers wore such skimpy outfits it reminded me of the “rehearsal clothes” the dancers in Busby Berkeley’s 1930’s musicals wore when they were rehearsing before they put on the lavish costumes they wore in what were supposedly the final performances. I would have liked it even better if they’d been clad in longer and snazzier dresses that would have done more to evoke the late-1930’s feel Carpenter seemed to be going for both in her song itself and the overall stage set, but that’s just me. Following that were two awards presentations, with Doechii winning Best Rap Album for Alligator Bites Never Heal (according to her Wikipedia page, Alligator Bites Never Heal is available only as a mixtape; it also said Doechii is Bisexual and she recently gave up alcohol and drugs, the latter of which she alluded to in her acceptance speech) and Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘n Sweet (that’s how it’s officially spelled!) for Best Pop Vocal Album.

The next artist who performed was Chappell Roan, whom I’d seen in a previous appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert performing “Red Wine Supernova,” a much gentler song from her album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, nearly a year ago (February 15, 2024). I had made a note of her then but had never followed up with her, and that was my loss. Roan’s Grammy performance of a song called “Pink Pony Club” was preceded by a biographical segment that identified her as a Lesbian (according to her Wikipedia page, she’s in a relationship with a woman who isn’t in the music business and she wants to keep her partner’s identity secret because she’s already put out enough by menacing letters she’s received from so-called “fans”). “Pink Pony Club,” her breakthrough hit, was inspired by The Abbey, a Gay club in West Hollywood, and for her Grammy performance of it she dressed in a party costume with a hat that fell off in mid-song and had a dance troupe that I suspect were all women, though many of them were wearing false beards and other nods to the so-called “drag king” community of women who dress more or less as men. I liked her a lot after that and liked her even more when she won the Grammy for Best New Artist, and instead of the usual acceptance-speech platitudes she launched into a long diatribe, most of which she read from a notebook, about how the music industry exploits young talent. She said that when she signed her first recording contract (with Atlantic in 2017) she was underage, and she pleaded with the industry to give young artists stipends and health coverage. I’d like to say, “RIGHT ON, SISTER!” (and I will), even though horrifically the trend in employment is going in entirely the opposite direction: as part of their ever-present drive to make themselves richer and the rest of us poorer, modern-day employers are figuring out more and more inventive ways to turn employees into “independent contractors” so they don’t have to provide steady salaries and benefits. Be that as it may, Chappell Roan’s CD has just zoomed to the top of my Want List after both of her performances last night.

After the award for Best Country Album went to Country Carter by Beyoncé (I’m glad Beyoncé felt like she could make a country album even though the people hailing it as some sort of genre-breaking innovation are guilty of first-itis; Black artists have been recording country music at least since Nat “King” Cole and Ray Charles in the early 1960’s, and 60 years after Charley Pride’s breakthrough there are plenty of Black artists that identify themselves wholly or mostly as country singers), the Grammy producers lumped together all the remaining Best New Artist nominees and had them perform one after each other. First up was a mixed-race, mixed-gender rock band from Houston called Khruangbin doing a song called “May Ninth,” after which Benson Boone (a reasonably attractive and talented young white singer-songwriter) did “Beautiful Things” and rapper Doechii did “Catfish.” Next up was a white man named Teddy Swims doing a would-be soul song called “Lose Control” that reminded me of Joe Cocker’s similarly inept attempts in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s to sound African-American. Fortunately the next artist was a genuinely Black singer called Shaboozey doing a song called “Tipsy.” Though Shaboozey is being marketed as a country singer, his song had far more of the genuine spirit of soul music than Teddy Swims’s wanna-be effort. The Best New Artist nominees section closed with an absolutely electrifying performance of the song “Oscar-Winning Tears” by Raye, an African-British singer (her father was English and her mother Ghanaian and Swiss). If they still want to do a biopic of Lena Horne (one had been set up for Janet Jackson until she had her infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl and Horne was so offended she withdrew the rights), Raye would be great casting. It’s a real pity she had to be nominated for Best New Artist the same year as Chappell Roan!

The next performance after Chappell Roan’s great acceptance speech for Best New Artist was a duet of the old The Mamas and The Papas’ hit “California Dreaming” by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga. Not surprisingly, she outsang him, but at least this is the first time I’ve seen Mars when he didn’t seem to be auditioning for a biopic of Michael Jackson! The next segment was a long speech by NARAS president Howie Mandel, who prattled on about how the Grammy sponsors have expanded their membership to include more women and people of color (memo to Mandel: that is so last year! In the Trump Reich the emphasis is on getting rid of programs that promote “DEI,” short for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” and the latest big Right-wing swear word!). A number of presenters said just before announcing the winners (sometimes they said, “And the winner is … ” and sometimes they said the more politically correct version, “And the Grammy goes to … ”) that they had been voted in by 13,000 NARAS members, a number that got repeated so often it became a talisman. Mandel then introduced The Weeknd, who had vowed to boycott the Grammys before they went on their big “inclusion” drive, who played a couple of songs called “Will I Lie for You?” and “Timeless.” After that they sneaked in one of the best performances of the night – Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” – disguised as a MasterCard commercial! After Shakira won the Best Latin Pop album for Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (which my husband Charles helpfully translated for me as “Women Don’t Cry Anymore”), the next item was musically one of the best performances of the night.

It was an extended tribute to the late Quincy Jones and it began with Herbie Hancock playing a beautiful piano instrumental version of “Killer Joe” (a welcome throwback to the days when the Grammy Awards made at least token efforts to include classical and jazz instead of focusing relentlessly on modern-day pop and rap!), Cynthia Erivo doing a stunning version of “Fly Me to the Moon” (an obscure album track by Peggy Lee, who recorded it under songwriter Bart Howard’s original title, “In Other Words,” until Quincy Jones, producing the Frank Sinatra/Count Basie album It Might as Well Be Swing, dug it up, retitled it, and came up with an iconic recording that made the song a standard), Lainey Wilson and pianist Jacob Collier doing “Let the Good Times Roll” (the one Louis Jordan introduced and Ray Charles covered), Stevie Wonder playing harmonica on Jones’s instrumental “Bluesette,” a tribute to the all-star charity record “We Are the World” featuring two L.A. private high-school choirs, and Janelle Monaé paying tribute to Jones’s records as Michael Jackson’s producer by doing a spectacular version of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and duplicating Michael’s famous dance movies as well or better than anyone else alive. Afterwards Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars won Best Pop Duo or Group for “Die with a Smile.” In her acceptance speech, Lady Gaga reaffirmed the humanity of immigrants and Trans people (even though she is neither) and at least dropped a hint that the creative community of America is mostly not on board with Donald Trump and his Reich. Then came the “In Memoriam” segment, during which Chris Martin of Coldplay and Gracie Abrams sang a song called “All My Love,” and ironically one of the people they paid tribute to was one of the few singers publicly aligned with Trump, country star Toby Keith. Among the names in the tribute were Kris Kristofferson, John Mayall, Dickey Betts (from the original Allman Brothers), Jack Jones, Steve Lawrence, Sergio Mendes, L.A. singer-songwriter J. D. Souther (better known for the songs he placed with Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne than his own records), and the next-to-last person alive who made records with Charlie Parker, Roy Haynes. (The last one is Sonny Rollins.)

Then Shakira came out and did a medley of two or three songs (I’m not sure since the medley contained a slow section in the middle but that may or may not have been a separate song) which the Google app identified as “Olos Así” (once again, my husband Charles came up with a helpful translation: “Eyes Like That”) and something Google kept telling me was called “BZRP Music Sessions, Volume 53 (Tiësto Remix).” (I didn’t know Spanish ever used umlauts.) Then one of the most disgusting people in music, Kendrick Lamar, won both Song of the Year and Record of the Year for something called “Not Like Us.” I’ve hated Kendrick Lamar ever since he performed a totally unintelligible rap on a previous Grammy Awards show in which he followed the opening number from the mega-hit Broadway musical Hamilton, which used rap and non-traditional casting to tell the tale of America’s Founding Fathers, and as I wrote after that show, just as the cast of Hamilton had briefly made me think that rap could actually be beautiful, moving and express an artistic point, here came Kendrick Lamar to remind me once again of the garbage it usually is. I got even angrier when the Los Angeles Times came out with a review the next day saying that Lamar’s incomprehensible piece of shit was the best song on the program and lamenting that he hadn’t won Album of the Year. Since then Lamar has made a career of winning awards that rightfully belonged to his artistic betters; when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music I thought, “They wouldn’t give it to Duke Ellington, but they gave it to fucking Kendrick Lamar.” And last night one of the records he beat out for Record of the Year was “Now and Then,” the last single to feature all four of The Beatles. (In fairness, “Now and Then” – based on one of John Lennon’s late-1970’s demo tapes which they tried to work up into a new recording in 1995 for the Anthology project, which is how George Harrison got on it – isn’t that great a song.)

After a final performance by Charli XCX of a medley of “Von dutch” (that’s the correct typography) and “Guess,” the Album of the Year award went to Beyoncé for Country Carter. Host Trevor Noah exalted that Beyoncé had finally won Album of the Year, an award a lot of people thought should have gone to her 2016 album Lemonade. (I wasn’t one of them, though; she lost to Adele’s 25, and though even Adele said publicly Lemonade should have won, I was put off by the fascistic videos Beyoncé put out for it, which looked like they’d been directed by the love child of Busby Berkeley and Leni Riefenstahl.) The show, which ran just 10 minutes short of four hours, ended limply with Randy Newman’s original recording of “I Love L.A.” played as the closer over clips from the show.