The 60th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday gave its highest accolades to Bruno Mars, an upbeat master of danceable pop, even as the show wrestled with a range of social and political topics including immigration, race and the #MeToo movement.
Mars won all of the six awards he was nominated for, including the top prizes of album, record and song of the year.
The next-most-rewarded artist was Kendrick Lamar, the provocative and critically admired rapper from Compton, California, whose five wins included a sweep of the rap categories.
Their victories came at the expense of Jay-Z, now a reigning giant of hip-hop and the music business in general, who had arrived as the most-nominated artist of the night, with eight nods, but went home empty-handed.
The show at Madison Square Garden also featured the Grammys’ much-anticipated response to the #MeToo movement. While the reckoning over harassment and gender equality has swept over Hollywood, media and politics, its effect on the music industry had been minimal, leading to scrutiny over how the show would address the issue. But a call-to-arms by Janelle Monáe, and an emotional performance by Kesha, approached it head-on.
“You see, it’s not just going on in Hollywood, it’s not just going on in Washington,” Monáe said. “It’s right here in our industry as well.”
“And just as we have the power to shape culture,” she added, “we also have the power to undo a culture that does not serve us well.”
Mars, who has earned the respect of the industry as an all-around entertainer, capable of repeatedly scaling the pop charts and entertaining the nation at the Super Bowl, won album of the year for “24K Magic” as well as record of the year for the title track and song of the year — a songwriters’ award — for “That’s What I Like.” (The album also claimed an engineering prize.)
Song of the year went to the eight writers of “That’s What I Like,” a slice of 1980s-throwback funk. Accepting the award, Mars was surrounded by what looked like an entourage, but they were the credited writers of the song, reflecting the new production model of pop music in which huge teams of specialized writers collaborate.
“I’ve been knowing these guys for over a decade,” Mars said. “All the music-business horror stories you’ve seen in the movies, we’ve been through all of them.”
“It’s an honor to share this with you all tonight,” he told them.
In addition to Mars, they were Christopher Brody Brown, James Fauntleroy, Philip Lawrence, Ray Charles McCullough II, Jeremy Reeves, Ray Romulus and Jonathan Yip.
The Grammys, which were hosted for a second time by James Corden, were in New York for the first time in 15 years. Like most awards shows, the Grammys have wrestled for years with issues of diversity: ethnic, gender and, in this case, musical.
In the days leading up the awards, the Grammys faced scrutiny over how the show — and the music industry at large — would respond to the #MeToo movement and the demonstration of solidarity at the Golden Globes this month, when the women of Hollywood, wearing black, presented a united front. The awards are bestowed by the Recording Academy.
Just days ago, a small group of midlevel female music executives called for artists to wear a white rose to the Grammys as a sign of “hope, peace, sympathy and resistance.” By Thursday, a handful of stars including Lady Gaga and Clarkson had pledged their support. On Sunday, the group circulated a list of music-industry professionals and artists who had signed on to the effort, adding Pink, Dua Lipa and Lil Uzi Vert, among others.
After Monáe spoke, Kesha sang “Praying,” her ballad of anger and redemption, surrounded by women all in white, including Cyndi Lauper, Camila Cabello, Julia Michaels and Andra Day and the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women who sing protest songs.
Kesha became pop’s symbol of the fight against sexual assault when, in a 2014 lawsuit, she accused her producer, Dr. Luke, of inflicting years of abuse. (Dr. Luke, whose real name is Lukasz Gottwald, in turn accused Kesha of fabricating the story in an attempt to escape her recording contracts.)
Her voice breaking, Kesha sang, “You brought the flames and you put me through hell” and “When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name.”
As she finished, she held back tears, and the choir gathered around her in a group embrace.
At the preshow ceremony, several artists wore white roses, although their comments about it were muted. Reba McEntire, the country star, was asked about the white rose on her dress after she won best roots gospel album for “Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope.”
“My message is, I want to treat you like I want to be treated,” McEntire said. “It’s the golden rule. I think if we did that more often, a lot of these problems would be nonexistent. Let’s just treat people kindly.”
Clarkson and Nick Jonas, both wearing white roses, presented the best new artist award to Alessia Cara, a 21-year-old Canadian pop singer who has songs of empowerment like “Scars to Your Beautiful.” After the microphone was lowered reach her, Cara, who was also wearing a white rose, said: “Holy cow, I’m shaking. I’ve been pretend-winning Grammys since I was a kid, like in my shower.”
Awards Pile Up
Attendance among the stars was spotty at the earlier ceremony where most of the awards were handed out. Lamar won best rap performance, best rap song and best music video, all for “HUMBLE.” He also won best rap/sung performance, for “LOYALTY.,” featuring Rihanna. Mars won best R&B performance and R&B song for “That’s What I Like,” and best R&B album for “24K Magic.” “That’s What I Like” later won song of the year, a songwriters’ award.
Ed Sheeran, who was snubbed in the top categories, was awarded best pop vocal album, in absentia, for “÷,” one of last year’s biggest hits. He later won best pop solo performance, for “Shape of You.” Childish Gambino won best traditional R&B performance for his song “Redbone,” a 1970s funk throwback that was a surprise hit at radio last year.
The singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton won the best country album Grammy for “From a Room: Volume 1” and won two early awards: best country solo performance for “Either Way,” and best country song for “Broken Halos,” which he wrote with Mike Henderson.
Jason Isbell also won two: best Americana album, for “The Nashville Sound,” and best American roots song, for “If We Were Vampires.” Carrie Fisher won a posthumous Grammy — her first — in the best spoken word album category, for “The Princess Diarist.”
Preshow Controversy
Hours before the show began, it already had a Trump controversy. On Saturday night, CNN aired an interview with Jay-Z as part of the inaugural episode of “The Van Jones Show,” in which Jay-Z commented on the president’s reported denigration of Haiti and African countries.
“It is disappointing and it’s hurtful,” Jay-Z said. “Because it’s looking down at a whole population of people and it’s so misinformed because these places have beautiful people and beautiful everything. This is the leader of the free world speaking like this.”
By 8:18 a.m. Sunday, the president fired off his response on Twitter: “Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!”
A little more than an hour later, Jones — who is managed by Jay-Z’s company, Roc Nation — wrote on Twitter in response, noting that he did ask Jay-Z about the president’s record on reducing black unemployment, and Jay-Z responded that the issue was about treating people with respect and not, as he put it: “Treat me really bad and pay me well.”
Some stars at the preshow ceremony seized the opportunity to make political or personal statements. Residente, a Puerto Rican rapper who founded the influential group Calle 13, won best Latin rock album (for “Residente”). Dedicating his prize “to my country, Puerto Rico,” he spoke about the need to seek out reliable sources of news about the island.
“What’s happening in Puerto Rico is horrible,” he said. “We’ve been without electricity for six months now. Some people are dying because they are not eating well. All of that, I had it in my heart when I won this a moment ago.”
Cécile McLorin Salvant, a Haitian-American singer who won best jazz vocal album, addressed President Donald Trump’s comments about Haiti and Africa. “At some points you have to either laugh or cry,” she said. “I choose to laugh.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
source http://www.pulse.ng/the-new-york-times/entertainment/at-grammys-music-shares-the-stage-id7905397.html
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