Last night’s Grammy Award Show featured performances that rivaled Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime monstrosity and had its share of winners and losers. Here is my “alternative” take on the evenings proceedings.
Winners:
Whitney Houston–The big winner of the night. Sales have gone through the roof. Another big winner is her record company Sony, who has reportedly raised the prices of all of Whitney’s CD’s overnight.
Adele–Proves that you don’t have to be some fake pop superstar to be good and win awards. At least she’s genuine.
Rick Rubin gets credit
Rick Rubin–Actually gets credit for Adele from Adele. Score one for the Ewoks.
Bruno Mars–The ghosts of James Brown and Jackie Wilson converge for the best performance of the night. Plus he has the hair to match.
Neil Portnow–NARAS CEO and Billboard Magazine’s 56th most powerful man in the music industry is getting better at delivering the mandatory annual propaganda speech justifying NARAS’ existence and is hands down more likable than his smarmy predecessor. Keep this up and he could be hosting a game show sometime in the future. But Neil, crowbarring in a plea for “eqitable compensation” to an audience of rich pop superstars? What about the 99%? Sounds a little Romneyesque.
Taylor Swift–Milquetoast country singer looked great and gave a surprisingly strong performance. Who knew the banjo could be sexy?
The Band Perry & The Civi Wars–This year’s Mumford & Sons
Foo Fighters–Finally, a real rock group. The Who of the 21st century.
Lucian Grainge–The new President of Show Business, Grainge is channeling Swifty Lazaar, forgoing the usual post-ceremony extravaganza by hosting a Grammy viewing party at his home for 150 close personal friends and acquaintances.
Did Clive also discover Muddy Waters?
Clive Davis (pre-show Honorable Mention)–In the face of tragedy, after delivering a heartfelt eulogy to Whitney Houston written by his PR people, Clive stood up and bravely looked death and television news cameras directly in the eye and declared “Let the music begin!”
Losers:
Gone fishing?
Lady Gaga–Shut out of every award, Gaga looked like she had been caught in a Japanese tuna fishing net.
Where can you get a glass of Metamucil in this joint?
Beach Boys/Glen Campbell–”Good Vibrations” was fun to hear, but they all looked like the members of the audience. After “Vibrations” The Beach Boys looked like they didn’t know where they were, but at least Glen Campbell didn’t forget the lyrics to “Rhinestone Cowboy”.
Tony Bennett–Enough of the duets. Next he’ll be singing “Return To Sender” in a duet with the UPS man.
LL Cool J–What a barrel of laughs.
Coldplay–Not The Who of the 21st century. More like the Ambrosia of the 21st century.
David Guetta--The Staples Center audience appreciated the extra-long bathroom break.
Pissed off and screaming about it
Katy Perry–Is it my imagination or is she always screaming? Or was that just for Russell?
Get the poison out!
Nicki Minaj–What the hell was that all about? Now I’m beginning to understand why the Roman Empire fell.
Scooby dooby doo
Paul McCartney–”My Valentine”? Would he have done that if John Lennon were still alive? Almost makes you long for “Back To The Egg”. But at least he finished strong, proving the old show biz adage, “give the audience what they want”.
© 2012, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.
