Grammy Awards: Adele Sweeps while Most of the Performances Made Me Sleep

The Grammy Awards focus more on the performances than the actual awards presented.  I will however cover the big winners of the night, and those were Adele and The Foo Fighters.  Adele is the second female performing artist to win 6 Grammy Awards, the other artist was Beyonce.  Adele won the three top prizes Album, Song and Record of the Year; she also won Pop Vocal Performance, Pop Vocal Album, and Short Form Video.  The Foo Fighters won five Grammy Awards all in the rock genre category.  Bon Iver took home the other major award Best New Artist.

Best Performances of the Night

Beach Boys Tribute

Maroon 5 and Foster the People captured the the essence of the Beach Boys.  I was pleased with both of their renditions of the Beach Boys music.  Then the Beach Boys came on stage and while many of don't look that great, they did a great job for their age capturing the beautifully fun element of their music.

Adele

A simple, classic, and beautiful return to the stage after the surgery on her throat.  While her voice seemed a little different I was still pleased get to hear beautiful voice.

Glenn Campbell Tribute

The Band Perry and Blake Shelton rocked it in the tribute to this country music icon.  These artists knew this legend and were able to put on a show that sold his musical experience.  Campbell then came on to sing his iconic song "Like A Rhinestone Cowboy, and the audience was totally into it!  Not my type of music, but I like what they did.

Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt's Tribute to Etta James

These two have great voices, and I am glad they picked these women to pay tribute to her instead of Christina Aguilera.  While I love Aguilera these two women captured James soul like no other could.

The Civil Wars

I would have much rather heard more from this country duo than from Taylor Swift, they had me wondering and asking who are these two people, and made me want more, that was something that did not happen much tonight.

The Boring 

Two times the Foo Fighters

While the Foo Fighters were not bad they were boring. What was the point of these them performing twice.  The first Foo Fighters performance was alright, and the second one was decent, and they proved they are a solid rock band, but their performances did not do anything earth shattering.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

While I love the energy that Bruce Springsteen has with the E Street Band their opening performance was a big yawn and set the tone for the night

Two times the Paul McCartney

I love Sir Paul, but both his performances had me wishing I started the show late, and could fast forward through him; he was just boring tonight.

Bruno Mars

Not much to say he's a good performer, but continued the pattern after the boss which just a lackluster boring performance that had some good dancing.

Bad Performances

Coldplay and Rihanna

Rihanna was so stiff and wooden; she did not command the stage and her performance with Chris Martin was terrible.  When Martin joined his band for their single "Paradise" I grew optimistic, but their performance fell flat.

Two times Chris Brown

I am not going to say much about Chris Brown because i have many strong personal feelings about how much I strongly dislike the fact that the music industry promotes him so regularly, and he has such a violent past and promoting him often seems to promote rape culture....there I go I need to stop.  Beyond seeing his penis through his tight pants there was not much exciting about seeing him perform.

Nicki Minaj

I like her and I often do mind when artists use their shtick and do some off the wall things, but out of context this was a big mess.  Roman is her alternate bad boy personality, and while she started with one of her best songs Roman's Revenge she went too off the wall and too much for the show rather than allowing the song to speak for itself.

Taylor Swift

Swift's album Speak Now is much better than her second album which won for album of the year, and "Mean" is a good song, and this performance was more boring than bad, but I just could not get into her at all, and she made me long to change the channel.

Katy Perry

Stop asking her to perform; she is not good live, and her stuff is all about the production.  Her new single is an attempt or seems to be an attempt to show the emotional side from Russell Brand, but it lacks the emotional context with her "live" performance.


Overall the show was pretty boring, and did not give me much to talk about at work the next day except the beauty that is Adele, and more continued talk about the loss of the wonderful Whitney Houston.  on a side not I enjoyed Jennifer Hudson's performance, and thought it was wonderfully emotional.  There was no cohesion to the actual show, and I thought having a host took away from this award show.  Go back to your old format and structure the show better next year, pick a theme and stick to it!