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!

The Grammy's Spread the Wealth but Crown Adele, Kanye, Bruno Mars, and The Foo Fighters Handsomely

The Grammy Award nominations were announced live on CBS last night, and these awards are always tough for me to predict.  As you can tell I rarely post about music, I like it, but I only talk about when it comes to award shows.  I think the nominees are interesting with some surprises.  This is an interesting year where Pop dominates!

Adele leads the female nomination tally with 6 award nominations including Album of the Year (21), Record and Song of the Year for "Rolling in the Deep", nominations in the Pop categories, and Short Form Music Video.  Adele has had an amazing year and at the moment I would crown her the frontrunner for most of these awards.

The shocking leader of the pack is the man so divisive, Kanye West with 7 nominations.  This is not Kanye's first time having the most nominations he had that honor two albums prior.  Kanye also had two albums out this year which helped him to rack up the largest number of nominations.  The two albums were "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" and "Watch the Throne" his collaboration with Jay-Z.  While Kanye did receive a Song of the year nomination for "All of the Lights" he was shut out of the Album of the Year category.

Bruno Mars like Adele landed 6 nominations.  Mars was nominated for Album of the year for "Doo-Wops and Hooligans"; he also received Record of the Year and Song of the Year nominations for smash hit "Grenade", and some nominations in the Pop categories.

The other big nominee was The Foo Fighters with 6 nominations.  The Foo Fighters netted an Album of the Year nomination for the second time, and they were honored in the Rock category for the rest of their nominations.

 The Foo Fighters are only artist in the Album of the Year category that are not nominated in the Pop Album of the Year.  This bodes well for this group to win this award for the first time.  The other Album of the Year nominees are Lady Gaga's "Born this Way" (her third Album of the Year nomination) and, I can't believe I am going to say this, but Rihanna is nominated for Album of the year with "Loud."

There were a few shocking omissions from the major categories. Taylor Swift, the winner of Album of the year two years ago,  was left out of the general field categories and only received three nominations in the country categories.  In fact the only general field nomination in the Country genre is for The Band Perry for Best New Artist.

The Best New Artist's did a great job with nominations this year; Nicki Minaj has four, Bon Iver also has four, but is the only Best New Artist nominee with nominations in the general field category.  Bon Iver is nominated in Record and Song of the Year for "Holocene."  The other nominees are J. Cole and Skrillex.

Beyonce a 16 time Grammy winner has only two nominations in minor categories.  Her album "4" was not as commercially successful, and divided the fans and critics alike.  Tony Bennett was seen to be a spoiler in the general field categories, but was only nominated for two trophies.

This is going to be an interesting year, with pop dominating.  The general field categories reflects the year well.  There were not a lot of great Albums, but Adele's, and The Foo Fighters were two of the best.  I think this Gaga's weakest album, and Rihanna came back with a stronger album, but I would not have nominated her in this category.  Here is the list of the general field nominations.

Album of the Year

Adele-"21"

The Foo Fighters-"Wasting the Light"

Lady Gaga-"Born this Way"

Bruno Mars-"Doo-Wops and Hooligans"

Rihanna-"Loud"

Record of the Year

Adele-"Rolling in the Deep"

Bon Iver-"Holocene"

Bruno Mars-"Grenade"

Mumford and Sons-"The Cave"

Katy Perry-"Firework"

Song of the Year (award is given to the writers)

Adele-"Rolling in the Deep"

Bon Iver-"Holocene"

Bruno Mars-"Grenade"

Mumford and Sons-"The Cave"

Kanye West-"All of the Lights"

Best New Artist

The Band Perry

Bon Iver

J. Cole

Nicki Minaj

Skrillex

Predicting winners at this point is difficult, but I would say that The Foo Fighters will win album because it's the only rock album amongst four other pop albums.  With that said last years Album of the Year winner was a shock, so this is by no means a done deal.  I think Adele has an excellent shot, and Bruno Mars could be a spoiler.  I think "Rolling in the Deep" is going to easily take both Record and Song of the Year.  Bon Iver will most likely win Best New Artist, but look out for the country voting block.  The Band Perry is the only nomination for country in the major catgeories, and they may team up to make sure that win happens.