From "Grammys 2024 performances, ranked from best to worst/Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’s duet of ‘Fast Car’ was the highlight of the night, along with Joni Mitchell and Annie Lennox’s moving ballads" (WaPo).
Was that "solidarity with Gaza" or an attempt to resolve the longstanding conflict between O'Connor and Prince? No way for the 2 dead artists to declare a truce, but maybe some will see Lennox and Wendy and Lisa as proxies for the departed disputants.
But if we want to talk about symbolism, how does a raised fist represent a cease fire? Doesn't the fist let slip that a cease fire is wanted so that the struggle can continue?
And look at that typo: "balled" for "ballad."
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There WAS a ceasefire on 10/6. Hamas broke it. Isn't the first time Hamas broke a ceasefire.
These people should go over there and protest in Gaza.
I don't knock her for wanting a ceasefire, but there's a subtext of being in solidarity not with Gaza but with Hamas. The raised fist is a symbol of defiance, not just to authority but to a certain kind of authority. They're defining Israel as a colonial authority and Hamas as freedom fighters. My subtext is fuck off.
Lennox is one of the great singers with a voice as powerful as O'Connor's. I was interested to watch this until I heard she turned it political.
I'm embarrassed to say I didn't notice the typo. Because a fist can be balled, I slid right past it and somehow made it into a coherent sentence.
how does a raised fist represent a cease fire?
Forget it. She’s rolling…
Are we still wrecking lines from Landis movies? If so, change that to Forget it. She’s running…
See you next Tuesday….in the see you next Tuesday sense.
Seems like I'm usually against whatever artists are for.
Doesn't the fist let slip that a cease fire is wanted so that the struggle can continue?
I wonder if anyone else will make that excellent point. Calling for unilateral disfistment is a hallmark of the Left, while the Right wants to pump up and put on a gun show.
Lennox has always seemed a stark, cold and in-your-face sort of artist. Meh… whatever…
When I read that “balled” I thought an artist started crying 😭 or balling, whaling?
I don't know all the details or what's true or not true but I think Sinead O'Connor accused Prince of some kind of physical abuse, throwing things at her or hitting her with something, so I'm not sure why the Grammies would be thinking that commemorating her passing should include a call for "reconciliation" with her abuser.
I guess Vanessa Redgrave has passed the torch to Annie Lennox now?
So, Lennox is in solidarity with Hamas, eh? Shouldn't she be wearing a penis hat then while singing her 'balleds' off?
If these 'artistes' wanted to be real revolutionaries (i.e., actually bring about sustained peace) they'd be wearing MAGA hats.
Delicious irony that Tracy Chapman's recording of "Fast Car" went to number one on Apple music after she & Luke Combs said fuck you to the haters on the left trying to make Luke's version racist, and performed a duet.
The rest of that award show cosplay is completely ignorable.
Woof! Always thought Lennox's voice teetered on the edge of total shitdom. Now that she's a senior, it's tipped over into horrid caterwauling. In the 80s, it was saved only by Dave Stewart's production. Loved those hits. Under no illusions, though, about the quality of her singing. The praise heaped on her puzzles me to this day. The empress's new clothes and all that.
Sad to see Joni in that condition. The academy (or whoever) needs someone-- akin to the person at the NYT who writes/updates obits far in advance-- who can monitor the future zeitgeist and honor these people with a live performance/ tribute long before their skill head shitward. (Perhaps the ravages of Morgellons took her voice longer ago than anyone thought.)
WASN'T there a ceasefire? Back on Oct 6th? What ever Happened, to THAT Cease Fire?
Couldn't there had been Another cease fire? back in December? If the gazans had returned their hostages?
WHO is causing this warfare? Could someone explain it to me? Maybe rcocean could help?
rc? what happened to the Previous cease fire?
was forced to watch the Grammys last night. Observations:
Haven't seen Tracy Chapman since "Fast Car" was popular. Man, that grey hair on her hurt.
I'm not into the Taylor Swift bashing thing, until last night. Geez, she just had to stand up in the center of the room (to groove to "Fast Car") rather than just let Tracy have her moment? Boorish. Later, when she was given her little trinket the first thing she said was a self-aggrandizing, "This is my 13th Grammy..." That's for other people to point out while you take a modest little bow, Hon. Do the night over, Tay Tay.
Tracy Chapman and Annie Lennox were, as would have been expected, the high points of the music presentations. The Black guy with the magenta suit and silver-sequined boots was kinda cool and entertaining too. The tribute to Tina Turner was nice even if it is cosmically impossible to properly emulate Tina doing "Proud Mary."
The Stevie Wonder/Tony Bennett mashup was just horrific; no other word for it.
The rest of it, as was expected, was 20-something twinklebirds singing monotonous auto-tuned pap, and hip-hoppers doing that voice modulation thing they do on every song (for which there is probably a technical term but which I have always referred to as "Negro yodeling").
Never cared for Joni Mitchell's voice either but that was nice, and touching.
A few good moments but nowhere near enough to justify my watching this. I ain't doin' that again.
Grammys is the Oscars on steroids when it comes to leftist political commentary in a bubble.
Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’ duet was perfect. It was beautiful to watch how joyful they were, playing that together. Combs was completely smitten. She is so talented, and so beautiful still….
That duet may actually have been the cease-fire moment of the evening, dontcha think?
Palestinians have struggled for nearly a century, waging seasonal Springs, to push the Jews into the sea.
Fists raised, bumped, represent violent ideation.
So, she's another wealthy fascist lib twat. Surprising exactly no one. Sure, a cease fire, right after every hamas is slaughtered. Make the land palestinian free from the river to the sea. In light of the palestinian past behavior I think it's a proportionate response. They've earned every bit of it. Now, as far as the turds whom support the hamas response, hmmmm.
WTF was up with Stevie singing "The Best is Yet to Come" for dead people? Did the Grammys find Jesus?
I'm sure there would be another cease fire if the people of Gaza turned over all the members of Hamas and rejected terrorism full stop. Otherwise, maybe Israel is just implementing "from the river to the sea"??
I had a crush on a sophomore cheerleader when I was a senior in high school. I never pursued it. After school, she was always friendly to me. She went on to have a distinguished career (I believe) as a professor in South Africa and when I would run into her at reunions and on FB, she continued our high school friendship. A few years ago I discovered that her husband, a doctor, had an affair with Lennox and wound up divorcing my cheerleader, and marrying Lennox. That must have been some divorce settlement as she travels worldwide, enjoying life and visiting all sorts of neat places. She is still a nice lady. I looked up Lennox bio and sure enough, her husband's last name is the same as my cheerleader's adult children. Small world.
Meh! It was an almost entirely female dominated awards show, it was naturally going to be a race to the bottom to see who could get the most attention. Even Jay-Z acted like a little bitch when he mouthed off about Beyonce not winning a Grammy in every category.
Women won all 9 awards handed out at last night. Meanwhile Ted Nugent does podcasts with his dildo collection behind him.
Publications used to have a person called a Copy Editor on their staff to check a writer's work and clean it up if need be, but they have been deemed superfluous in this age of cost-cutting. Writers are now dependent on spellcheck to catch any errors, so you see things like "rein" instead of "reign" or in this case "balled" instead of "ballad" where the words are spelled correctly, but they're the WRONG words.
Cory Doctorow coined the perfectly cromulent word "Enshittification" in a different context, but now this downward spiral can be widely applied and much like entropy, it steadily increases with time.
As for Annie Lennox and her ilk, I have enjoyed their work. Their opinions, not so much.
Didn't watch the show, but I did just see a video of Chapman's and Comb's performance. Wonderful! They sang!
I was going to watch the Lennox performance but see that she doesn't just sing.
Haven't decide if I'll watch Mitchell yet. Leaning towards no - I don't want any there to be any chance to sully the "Fast Cars" performance.
Such a bunch of self-important assholes.
Only weak-minded people care about your political beliefs.
If you're waiting for Taylor Swift to tell you what to think or how to vote, you shouldn't be allowed to cast a ballot.
'Lennox has always seemed a stark, cold and in-your-face sort of artist. Meh… whatever…'
They always refer to themselves as 'artists.'
I don't. They're singers, actors, entertainers.
Art has nothing to do with it...
Did they really let Stevie have a baton?
I looked at the official lists and 1) didn't recognize even ten percent of the names and 2) find the inclusion of classical more quaint (quainter?) every year.
The Tracy and Luke duet was fine. Good American pop.
Joe Smith wrote: 'Lennox has always seemed a stark, cold and in-your-face sort of artist. Meh… whatever…'
Holy smokes—you don’t like the thing a lot of people like?? That’s so cool you’re such a badass….
So, Anne Lenox thinks it's great to stuff explosives in the raped vaginas of sexually tortured and murdered women in order to kill EMTs.
This isn't grey area stuff. I could say more, but why the hell bother?
Carry on, as it were. And screw your Sixties feminists for participating in such a sick exposition.
There are lines in the sand. Mix sand with silicone and water, and it's concrete.
If you don't condemn it, you validate it, Ann Althouse, Esquire.
who won the most annoying "artist" award?
hard pick. so many. Miley Circus would probably get my vote.
retail lawyer said...
Seems like I'm usually against whatever artists are for.
That's because leftists in general, and artists and musicians in particular, are feelers rather than thinkers. This also explains why so many single women support lefist causes. Anyone who is thinking is horrified by the atrocities committed and supported by the Gazans. Feelers only see things blowing up and wailing women and children when the Israelis responded to the atrocities, because that's what the Gazans want them to see.
Annie Lenox has a great voice. Too bad she's such a stupid get.
Hamas Nazis shot women in the face so many times - they were disfigured beyond anything human.
"Joe Smith wrote: 'Lennox has always seemed a stark, cold and in-your-face sort of artist. Meh… whatever…'
Holy smokes—you don’t like the thing a lot of people like?? That’s so cool you’re such a badass…."
That was someone else's quote, dumbfuck.
Try to keep up...what a moron.
Is this Keith Olbermann's secret account?
That's the only thing that would explain your abject cluelessness...
Rich crows about women getting awards (I can only guess why that's important) and reports that Ted Nugent does podcasts with his dildo collection behind him. That's the kind of intelligent insight I've come to expect from Rich.
What do the dildoes smell like, Rich?
See you next Tuesday?
Wealthy White lefty celebrities are the same the world over.
Terrorists aka - Palestinians and Hamas - need to release all the hostages first.
After that - the world should show up and turn Gaza into glass. Enough of this hot garage.
Crook Biden should stop sending our money to the Iranian Ayatollahs.
btw- Ordinary Palestinians are involved in the terrorizing and holding of, many hostages themselves.
**** fixed.
That was really rude of her. Stevie thought it was a microphone.
It's always a little disheartening when an artist I like for her art, says something completely idiotic.
Yeah, and the peace protesters during Vietnam definitely weren't actually warmongers for communist victory. Or they wanted the Beatles to get back together.
Sinead O'Connor was a convert to Islam and an infamous anti-Zionist.
Lennox is one of the great singers with a voice as powerful as O'Connor's. I was interested to watch this until I heard she turned it political.
What Kate said.
A few months ago I left a comment about the importance of "shared spaces" and how people with very different social, cultural, political, religious views can for a moment come together and be united by their love and/or support for something. But in the last few decades increasingly we see artists and entertainers forget this. "The personal is political" some say. Which is deeply offensive and totalizing.
I still think highly of Lennox as an artist. But with that gesture and brief statement she divided her audience. And yes I might be less inclined to listen to her.
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