I Watched The Entire Grammys Award Show

Yes to more music, less speeches. Next year let’s come up with some better numbers.

U2 opening with a cover of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” was an inspired oddball choice.

Maybe Whitney Huston wasn’t high, but thinks that behavior is what’s expected of her. Maybe she’s like, a real character now. Maybe she was high. Maybe the taut remainder of her face was compressing her brain.

Jennifer Hudson’s win for R&B something clearly surprised her. She was so sure the award was going to Al Green she’d already started in on her lobster dinner.

Like that "American Boy" song by Estelle or Adelle and Kanye. So scared to see Kanye, then relieved he was rapping, not singing with a vocoder. Someone tell Kid Rock rap lives! Amen! (Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen talking about Amen!) Actually, don’t.

During the performance of “Superstition,” part Klingon, part Hut Stevie Wonder, while simultaneously singing, playing synclaviar, and blowing harmonica, actually ate one of the Jonas Brothers who strayed too close. The Jonas Brother was replaced by a waiting clone in the second chorus, and no one was the wiser. No one but me. I saw!

A crazy suggestion: I know rappers sound best rapping over piano ballads and strings, but what if you were to get a rapper to perform over a beat and a hook? I think a good driving beat would reinforce the rhythmic nature of most rap performances.

For Coldplay’s Chris Martin to see sweet Gwyneth introducing Radiohead—the band he’s been watering down for years— must have been heartrending. Seeing his sweetheart gush about the real thing had to hurt, and to be so coldly blown off the stage by Thom Yorke and company (evidently Radiohead is now just Yorke and Jonny Greenwood.) had to hurt doubly so. Coldplay’s got a guy with a mallet; Radiohead has an army of guys with mallets. Album of the year, Chris? You and whose army?

M.I.A rules! She hit the stage all polka dotted pregnant, singing the real song of the year, “Paper Planes.” Then Kanye, Jay-Z, T.I. and Lil' Wayne, dressed like the Rat Pack, came onstage and held a rap summit. They banished M.I.A. to the sidelines like she was Shirley McClaine (It's a Rat Pack reference, you cultural illiterates!) about 1/20th of the way into her big Grammy moment so they could each make their second or third appearances. By the way, if they’re going to have a black rat pack, they should have gotten Thom Yorke to be Sammy. He would be the one-eyed white guy.

“Stay,” pretty good song. I like the singer. Kind of a country answer to that unhummable bombast Carrie Underwood threw at us.

This is the year Paul McCartney took a chance with a quickly written semi-edgy collaborative record with Youth in The Fireman. So it’s fitting he trotted out a rocker from 1963.

A bunch of other stuff happened, then they gave best album to Oh Brother Where Art Thou. Then Stevie the Klingon/Hut Wonder sang a song about universal brotherhood as the credits rolled. No one needed to see that. They should have just played some crowd noises and told him the Grammies were still going on. And then fed him the rest of the Jonas Brothers.

--Dan Kilian