Grammy Review

It's been a week since the grammy awards were handed out. What happened?

Robbery happened.

First of all this is my first grammy viewing in 5-6 years. The Grammy Awards has been my source for knowing new musical acts and some of the acts I love right now were first introduced to me or further cemented my attention on those artists by the awards years back when I was in middle school (Radiohead, Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Jewel, Norah Jones, Alicia Keys, White Stripes, Kanye West to name a few).

I didn't care about the Grammy ever since 2003. Why?? It keeps going to U2! I like them but come on.. It also got more and more into commercialized acts. However, I do follow the album and record of the year as well as Best Alternative Music Album every year. But I had better things to do..like facebooking, whenever the event was on tv. So why did I watch it this year? The guy in the link summed it up for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpcTKaW7-n4 (the segment about david bowie is cool too)

So the album of the year went to Robert Plant and Allison Krauss - Raising Sand. Radiohead and Coldplay were robbed. Critics are saying it's what the Grammy always do. Sympathy over artistic. Raising Sand is a good album, I believe in that, although I only listened to a few songs. But radiohead (In Rainbows) and coldplay (Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends) have more artistic albums in the nominations for this year's event. Lil Wayne's The Carter III should be next in line. Plant and Krauss did an upset, and even Plant was bewildered himself.

What more must they do to win? They might come up with another masterpiece (In Rainbows is not really a masterpiece though) but one veteran singer will have a comeback album and snatch album of the year, as well as every other award he/she could be nominated in. The same situation was with the collaboration of Norah Jones and Ray Charles a few years back. They won everything, due to some artistic credit but lots of sympathy.

John Mayer did the double by winning both the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (for Say) and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (for Gravity) in the same year. Michael Jackson did the treble in 1984 for Thriller and Beat It respectively, as well as Best Male R&B Vocals (Billie Jean) in the same year. Maybe other male artists won it before, but that is as far as I know. Congrats to Mayer. I like his voice and the way he sings. Probably my favorite male solo music act in the past few years.

But to be fair, grammy members' favorites The Eagles did not win any for their comeback album. AC/DC, R.E.M and Oasis were all shut out. Or maybe they released their albums after the eligible date (like Guns N' Roses). I'm lazy to find out. Indie acts that the critics put at the top of their lists of '08's bests, TV On The Radio, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend and MGMT were all shut out.

Metallica won Best Metal Performance. Is that a surprise? No. Congrats.

Coldplay won Song of the Year and Best Pop Group Vocal, both for Viva La Vida, and Best Rock Album for Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. They were, however, robbed in the Record of the Year category. I don't really like Viva to want it to win record of the year, but there's no way Krauss and Plant should win it with Please Read The Letter. The best single of 2008?? I'm not the only one puzzled.

Kings of Leon won Best Rock Group Vocal Performance for Sex On Fire. They deserve it. Congrats Kings.

Lil Wayne swept the rap categories, winning Best Rap Album (The Carter III), Best Rap Song (Lollipop), Best Rap Solo Performance (A Milli), and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group with Jay-Z, T.I. and Kanye West (Swagga Like Us).

Best New Artist nominee The Jonas Brothers gave a great performance with Stevie Wonder. I hope they'll break out of the Disney box and become a "real" pop/rock band soon. I was hoping they'd win but they didn't. Adele did.

Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift performed...not my type. But good for them.

I was quite impressed with Carrie Underwood's performance. The only country performer that kept me interested. Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, T.I. and Kanye West did a take with the pregnant M.I.A. Blink 182 appeared and announced that they are back together again. Green Day presented Album of the Year.

Radiohead's In Rainbows won Best Alternative Music Album, their 3rd win in this category, joint most wins with White Stripes.

Gwyneth Paltrow introduced Radiohead and described them as "one of the most influential, adventurous, and thoroughly artistic musical groups of all time".

Radiohead performed "15 Steps" with the University of Southern California (USC) marching band. But only Thom Yorke (lead singer) and Johnny Greenwood (lead guitarist) was on stage. The performance was a little disappointing, yet epic. Besides not having all the band members on stage, Thom was all crazy and ...lost himself, it was cool for the fans but new listeners could have enjoyed the radiohead mood with a slower tempo. Johnny's guitar sound was not clear and lots of instrumentation from the CD version were missing in this live performance. The marching band's "Eh!" shout doesn't bring the same mood as the kids in the studio version. The song could have been performed at a slower tempo. Nevertheless, it's Radiohead's first grammy performance even though they have been nominated and won several times.

Congrats to the winners. Now off to the Oscars.