Monday 27 January 2014

My Thoughts on the 56th Grammy Awards


For the first time in over a decade now, I didn't watch the Grammy Awards telecast live. But I did follow its proceedings online, and I have since watched the live performances and several choice highlights too. So all in all, I think I have a firm grasp of what went down in the Staples Center last night.

All that said, I can categorically declare this year's Grammys to be my favorite one thus far. And in case you haven't figured out why, it has a lot to do with the two guys in robot helmets pictured above. Daft Punk made music history last night by becoming the first electronic act to take home Album of the Year.

Not only did the French electronic duo win top honor, they also took home Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for their song Get Lucky, and Best Dance/Electronica Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, for Random Access Memories. In total, they won all five categories they had been contending for.

But it wasn't all Daft Punk last night. The 17-year-old New Zealand native, Lorde, won Song of the Year for Royals; Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won awards for Best New Artist, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for their song Thrift Shop, as well as Best Rap Album for their album, The Heist; while Pharrell Williams took home Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.

As for the other main attraction of the evening, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Imagine Dragons and others all gave stellar performances. Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams took the stage with legends Stevie Wonder and Nile Rodgers. Another standout was Pink, who performed Try and Just Give Me a Reason, with her signature high-wire acrobatics. You would think that the whole circus act routine would be old by now, but no. Instead, she never fails to impress.

5 comments:

  1. This was probably one of the better Grammy Awards. The performances were very good and clever how they paired up musicians. Thought that was cool Daft Punk won. (Dig their Tron Legacy soundtrack.) And I was stunned that Metallica performed One. Bet half the crowd didn't even know that song. All right, probably more than half.

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    1. Okay. I'll admit that I fall within the group that didn't know the song. But that's one of the reasons why I love the Grammys. You get to discover new music, or in this case, rediscover old ones.

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