"The Korean supergroup BTS has pulled its blockbuster album 'Arirang' from Grammy Awards consideration, in protest..."

"... of the new Asian Pop Music Performance category....The Recording Academy has been cooking up new categories for years. It started out with 28 in 1959. We’re up to 100 now.... Some reflect true genres and discrete markets. But most are the malignant offspring of the record business’s historical segregation, which divided Black and white artists into separate genres and markets, even if they were playing sonically similar music.... After a song from 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' won big this year, Asian Pop was created...."

Writes Dan Charnas, a professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYT, in "Pop Music Is the Problem" (NYT gift link).

Here's how I'd frame the question: Why don't the Grammys have a category called White Pop Music?

There are 2 directions to go with that question. You could say it's white supremacy or you could say it's anti-racism.

"Play the Beatles music to your kids.... We need this music in the world. We need peace and love. And we need the magic of the 60s to stay alive."

Said Sean Lennon, accepting a Grammy — for "best rock performance" — and uttering an ambiguity (does "to stay alive" refer to the 60s magic or to us (we'll die without it)):

Watch Sean Lennon's acceptance speech as they accept the GRAMMY for BEST ROCK PERFORMANCE for "NOW AND THEN" at the 2025 GRAMMYs. #TheBeatles#NowAndThen#SeanOnoLennon #GRAMMYS2025 #Grammys pic.twitter.com/zWWzpygPkO

— Carlos 🎧 🇦🇷 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@carlosgvizcaino) February 3, 2025

And here's the "performance" that won:

The Beatles have won a GRAMMY Award for “Best Rock Performance” for their song “Now and Then”pic.twitter.com/W6fYGSZjbL

— The Beatles Earth (@BeatlesEarth) February 3, 2025

Do you have to follow the instructions of the flight attendant if you're a Grammy nominee and the Lord is telling you to sing?

Answer below the fold.

"I know rock isn't the most important genre right now..."

#GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/fZK9oPUBVR

— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) March 15, 2021

"At the very end of a Grammys ceremony that did its best to pretend like the Recording Academy has always supported and centered Black artists, women and especially Black women..."

"... Billie Eilish was put in an impossible position... Awarded record of the year for 'Everything I Wanted'... Eilish could only gush over Megan Thee Stallion. 'This is really embarrassing for me,' Eilish, a white teenager who — like many in her generation and beyond — worships Black culture, said. 'You are a queen, I want to cry thinking about how much I love you.' She went on. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of Adele praising Beyoncé when '25' beat 'Lemonade' for album of the year in 2017... . Some online bristled at the performative white guilt on display, while others applauded Eilish’s apparently sincere fandom."

From "The Best and Worst of the 2021 Grammy Awards/Megan Thee Stallion owned the stage, struggling indie venues got a much needed spotlight and the event proved a pandemic awards show doesn’t have to look like a video conference" (NYT).

 

ADDED: I have saved a lot of time in life by never being interested in the Grammys. When I was young, in the 1960s, the Grammys didn't recognize the great music that I liked. They seemed irrelevant and archaic back then. I have spent some of my precious time caring about movie awards, but I guess that's not happening anymore, because the Oscar nominations just came out, and I don't care enough even to consider pushing myself to write something about it.

"I'm sure he thanks y'all."

The Grammys comedy sketch about trying out as the audiobook reader of "Fire and Fury" (and ending with Hillary Clinton).

"Spoken Word" is a category in the Grammy Awards, and it seems to be almost entirely the audiobook version of published, printed books. I love audiobooks, but I wouldn't call them "spoken word" performances. They keep giving the award to Presidents — Jimmy Carter (more than once! including 2 years ago for "A Full Life: Reflections at 90"), Bill Clinton (beating out David Sedaris!). They gave it to Hillary Clinton in 1997 for "It Takes a Village" (come on! who wants to listen to Hillary Clinton read her book).

My idea of a "spoken word" performance would be something more like what Spalding Gray used to do. Something like this, which he could take on tour and perform on stage, and you'd actually go see in a concert hall. I've done that. I've seen Henry Rollins give a spoken word concert. He once won a Grammy in the spoken word category, but it wasn't for a live, memorized performance like what I saw here in Madison years ago. It was a reading of his book "Get in the Van." And speaking — in written word — of Henry Rollins, I loved his performance on "Portlandia" as a member of the old punk rock band Riot Spray:



But back to last night's Grammys. I can't stand the Grammys, though I did DVR the show and attempt (unsuccessfully) to watch a few things, but I did watch that "Fire and Fury" sketch (just now, on YouTube). It must be hard for the Grammys people to figure out how to do politics, because they are playing to a general audience, and the people of the United States did elect Donald Trump. They can't act like they're talking within a group that all agree they hate Donald Trump. And yet those who like Donald Trump may like him in part because he can take all the heat you want to give him, his whole life has been heat, he likes heat, in a certain way. He wins even when he's attacked, as a certain subgroup of Trump fans understand.

In last night's sketch, we saw Cardi B, John Legend, DJ Khaled, Cher, and Snoop Dogg along with Hillary Clinton, and they were comical in different ways, some of which could be viewed as skeptical of the book or even admiring of Trump. Cardi B stops and says "Why am I even reading this shit? I can't believe this!" DJ Khaled seemed to love embodying Trump to proclaim, "If my shirt is on the floor, it's because I want it on the floor."

And a joke is made at Hillary's expense, with James Corden assuring her that her spoken-word Grammy is "in the bag." She has to say "The Grammy's the bag?" in an excited hopeful voice to set up the comedian James Cordon's line "in the bag," which is said in a way intended to remind us of how Hillary was (it seems) duped by pollsters and advisers assuring her that she'd already won the election.

ADDED: That "Portlandia" clip is even better now that Bruno Mars won all the Grammys.

When Paul McCartney, standing alone, enacted the old-time rock-concert spirit, and none of the rest of the music business bigwigs caught it.

At the Grammys, as Jeff Lynne and "what’s left of Electric Light Orchestra" played "Evil Woman” and “Mr. Blue Sky":



"Bigwigs" seemed like the best word for the job at hand. I didn't pick it in order to give Sia more prominence than she already has, but she did come to the Grammys looking like this. I guess that might look cool to people who don't remember Carol Channing:

Was it "adorable" for Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to enact reunion at The Grammys?

Here's how Buzzfeed presents it:

Paul McCartney And Ringo Starr Reunited At The Grammys And It Was Adorable
The other two Beatles couldn’t be there, so they did Paul’s new song "Queenie Eye."

Paul McCartney — deemed "the cute one" since he arrived on the world stage a half century ago — is a 71-year-old man. "The other two Beatles couldn’t be there" because of the utterly unadorable reality of death. Ringo seems to be a nice enough man, but he's roped into appearing on stage while Paul plays his new song. That is, Paul has another record. He's an industrious musician who has consistently put out records over the decades and kept himself in the public eye one way or another, and this year presents a special opportunity, working The Beatles' 50th anniversary.

It's appropriate to include Ringo, who's also put out records over the years, and whose survival — he's 73 — makes it possible to augment Paul with a living human and call it "The Beatles," not that Paul wanted to play some old Beatles song for the occasion. And it's not as if Ringo and Paul haven't reunited before. Buzzfeed says: "This is the first time Ringo and McCartney have performed together since 2009." A 5 year gap. So what?

Back in the 1970s, there was always talk about whether The Beatles would get back together. It was an over-discussed topic that had gotten to be a pathetic wish and a failure to recognize the good work all 4 of them had done post-Beatles. I remember when John Lennon died, in 1980, the first thought that crossed my mind that wasn't completely sad was: That ends all the talk about whether there will ever be a Beatles reunion.

When The Beatles were together, in the 1960s, no one who cared about them gave a damn about The Grammys, which didn't seem to get rock and roll at all. The Record of the Year for singles released in 1964 was "The Girl from Ipanema" by Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz. It was amazing that The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was even nominated, because no rock song had ever been nominated. The other nominees were "Downtown" (Petula Clark), "Hello, Dolly!" (Louis Armstrong), and "People" (Barbra Streisand). There was a term for what the Grammys rewarded back then: "easy listening." Or as I thought about it at the time: things that Cousin Brucie should not even play but did.

Having therefore always hated The Grammys, I'm not in tune with whoever watched The Grammys last night and have no idea what might seem "adorable" to them or why they would even want men in their 70s to be adorable... unless it's the way that young people patronize the very old. They're not that old.

Grammys.

I have no interest in this topic. I mean I was slightly interested in this photo of Ellen DeGeneres aiming her nose at the "keyhole" opening of Katy Perry's dress and in the fact that Lena Dunham has a boyfriend and he's in a band that had the "Song of the Year." And I'm interested in speculating about whether it was because of the Grammys that they ran such an atrocious episode of "Girls" last night. (The last few episodes of the show had been great, but this one descended into real estate porn: The girl gets a boyfriend seemingly for the purpose of letting us see all the rooms in his expensive house. Oh, that wasn't all there was. There was Lena Dunham — in one of said rooms and in nothing but her panties — playing ping pong. That carried forward the show's theme of really awkward nakedness. That's why I had to correct myself after I said "I might as well be watching HGTV.")

"Appropriately, Adele’s ascension happened during one of the dullest Grammy ceremonies in recent memory..."

"... a tour de force of bumbling anti-imagination hampered even further by the death of Whitney Houston the day before the show, which left producers scrambling to fit in raw tribute with shimmering and gauche spectacle."

The NYT's Jon Caramanica, carps about the dead diva, hampering from a bathtub.

AND: In other Grammy news, how many people tweeted that they'd let Chris Brown beat them up?

Adele.

1. Delightful on "60 Minutes."

2. In depth analysis of why her songs make people cry.

I'm glad The Grammys...

...  weren't too much about Whitney Houston dying. It wouldn't make any sense to overshadow Adele, whose night it was, who seems like a sweet person, who said "snot," which seemed to amuse the crowd immensely. I liked The Band Perry. Paul McCartney was okay, still slim and spry. Good of Springsteen to play with him in the end, on "The End." I was happy to see Brian Wilson still sitting upright... and Glenn Campbell able to remember the words as he journeys into the sunset of his life. Most of the music I could barely put up with. Lots of flashy lights. Costumes. Hugely long eyelashes. I know: It's for the kids. But this was the first time I'd ever watched The Grammys. Oddly enough. Wanted to see what they'd do about Whitney.

ADDED: And then there was Lady Gaga, always only in the audience, with her head encased in thick black netting. She didn't win anything last night, but she got to see — through that net — all the elaborate stage acts that seemed to want to be like her — notably Nicki Manaj — caught in her net. But it was Adele everyone likes now. The one lady standing center stage, emoting in music. I guess we'll be getting more of that, as the followers-on look to catch the next wave.

"I'd like to say: I'm bewildered. In the old days, we would have called this selling out. But I think it's a good way to spend a Sunday."

Thanks, Robert Plant, for summing up the lameness of today.