56th Annual Grammy Awards Review

This past Sunday, the 56th Annual Grammy Awards aired on CBS to honor the best in music of the past year. Jay Z garnered the most nominations (nine), followed by Justin Timberlake, and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. For the first time, the ceremony lasted for three and a half hours.

Beyoncé opened the show with a performance of her song, “Drunk in Love.” At this point there’s no doubt that Beyoncé can put on a great performance, and she proved that on Sunday. However, after Beyoncé’s performance, the telecast quickly declined in terms of quality of entertainment (see the pictured graph).

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis won “Best New Artist,” following which Lorde performed an exorcism on stage. Actually, it was just her singing “Royals” with some bizarre hand movements and facial expressions. Even though “Royals” is her biggest hit, it would have been nice if she performed a more recent song from her album. This was the case for several of the performances of the night – artists sang older songs that at this point are completely overplayed (“Royals,” “Radioactive,” “Same Love”).

The middle of the show was quite unmemorable. Robin Thicke performed that song that people initially liked but now hate because they found out what it’s actually about. Was anyone else secretly hoping Miley would show up to make things more interesting?

Ringo Starr gave a performance that seemed better suited for a karaoke bar (sorry, Beatles fans), but later on he joined Sir Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl for an enjoyable set. Imagine Dragons also took the stage with Kendrick Lamar for “Radioactive,” but they were overshadowed by Taylor Swift doing something that I wouldn’t call dancing.

Kacey Musgraves slowed things down with “Follow Your Arrow,” a better alternative to the now-overplayed “Same Love.” Musgraves also won “Best Country Album,” which was one of the better moments of the night because she beat Taylor Swift. When they were playing songs from each nominee in the country category, each clip was respectably country-sounding, and then “I Knew You Were Trouble” started playing. Taylor could have had a great chance in the pop category, but “Red” winning “Best Country Album” would be like “The Heist” winning “Best Rap Album.” Oh wait, that actually happened.

To finish up the show, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were joined by Mary Lambert in singing “Same Love.” Queen Latifah popped out and started officiating thirty-three weddings. In the aisles of the Staples Center there were thirty-three straight and same-sex couples getting married while Macklemore was singing. Props to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis for making an interesting performance out of a song that was overplayed on the radio. Then Madonna popped out singing “Open Your Heart.” It was a quite a moment, and those couples had some pretty cool wedding guests.

The best moment of the entire telecast was Jay Z giving a shout out to his daughter Blue Ivy in his accordance speech. “I want to tell Blue, ‘Daddy’s got a gold sippy cup for you,” he said. This just really sums up how I felt about the entire show.