Grammy Shakedown

I was so happy to see my girl Adele sweep the major categories and win six Grammys!  I appreciate that the Grammys are more variety concert than awards show though.  And here are my opinions on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good
I mean, Bonnie Rait and Alicia Keyes singing Etta James and then giving an award to Adele- what a one, two, three, four punch of amazing female voices!  Bruno Mars impressed with an old school number and showed he really has moves.  Interesting duets are always a staple of the Grammys (with none perhaps more  memorable than Eminem and Elton John) and this year Rihanna and Coldplay had another interesting mix.  If there was a category in this phrase for "great" it would be Adele's performance, and in particular those first few a cappella notes.  I literally got goosebumps.  She is so amazing and her emotion and grace during her standing ovation - nothing but classy.

The Bad
Taylor Swift singing in the middle of an Amish diorama grinning like a bumpkin who never realized she was famous - not cute and not buying it.  Katy Perry is generally awesome, but she should probably stick to shooting fireworks/whipped cream out of her boobs and singing catchy pop hits and leave the more intense pop/rock ballads to Pink.  The Grammys are also a great place to learn about new talent, like The Civil Wars, who rocked an awesome folk intro.  But then there's those bands, like Bon Iver, who actually never wanted you to know about them in the first place, and accept Grammys with phrases like, this is hard to accept because I really just wanted to write music for the intrinsic rewards.  Honey, please.

The Ugly
But then, really, Chris Brown, really?  His agent must be amazing because he performed twice!  Have we all forgotten that picture of Rihanna's face?  It seems the arts community is always eager to elevate the art over the artist - I mean remember Roman Polanski?  And Brown's song had the repeating lyrics "look at me now;" it was, and truly no pun intended, a slap in the face.  There's also no category for just plain weird, but if there was I think I would put the religious/dramatic performance by Nicki Minaj here.