By Anton Dedvukaj
Hello everyone, and welcome back to “Mic Drop”. Earlier this month, the 2022 Grammy Awards took place. The show was hosted by Trevor Noah for the second year in a row and took place in Las Vegas this year. Today, I will be analyzing the Big Four Awards and the performances that took place.
To start, there was Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Both awards went to Silk Sonic – the R&B superduo composed of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak – for their hit song “Leave the Door Open”. I thought that this was a well-deserved win, as I am a huge fan of the song and can definitely see why the Recording Academy liked it. Given how both men involved are huge Grammy darlings, it would have been easy to see coming. That is, unless you’re me, as I thought that the cultural impact of songs like “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo or “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” by Lil Nas X would have helped one or both of those songs win. That being said, these were two well-deserved wins and congratulations to them for, as Anderson put it, “a clean sweep”.
Next, there was the award for best new artist, which I and pretty much anyone paying attention to music in the last year saw coming from a mile away. It went to Olivia Rodrigo, and this was yet another well-deserved win. With how huge both SOUR and its four singles were, it wouldn’t have made much sense for it to go to anyone else.
Finally, there was the award for album of the year, and this one has generated some controversy. It went to Jon Batiste’s album WE ARE, and I have seen mixed reactions towards his win. I myself have never heard the album, but I did like his performance at the show – more on that in a bit – so I had no problem with him winning.
The controversy came from how he managed to beat out albums such as SOUR, evermore, MONTERO, and Planet Her, which were all more successful than WE ARE commercially. However, I feel the need to say that awards are not based on commercial success, and we shouldn’t try to discredit someone’s achievement because we had never heard of them. I personally didn’t have a favorite album that I wanted to win the award – I thought that 2021 was a great year for music and would have been okay with any of these albums winning – so I’m pretty happy for Batiste and his win.
Now, onto the performances. Silk Sonic opened the show with a performance of their Vegas-themed album cut, “777”. I am a huge fan of this song, and the pair were more than able to do it justice with their performance, starting the show off with a bang in the process.
Olivia Rodrigo followed with a performance of the song that went on to win Best Pop Solo Performance, “drivers license”. I thought that her performance was very good as well, and while a part of me was hoping for a performance of “good 4 u”, my personal favorite song of hers, she still put together a very good performance. Next up was J Balvin, who, alongside María Becerra, performed two of his hits, “Qué Más Pues?” and “In da Getto”. I’m not as familiar with his work or these songs, but the performance was pretty solid as a whole.
Then came BTS. They performed their megahit “Butter” and came prepared with a ton of entertaining visuals for their performance, including a skit where one member of the band showed Olivia Rodrigo a card trick that seemingly blew her mind. I’ve always considered BTS the type of act who know how to put on a good performance, and they were able to deliver.
After them was one of my favorite performances of the night from Lil Nas X. He performed his album cut “DEAD RIGHT NOW” to start, before leading into “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” and “INDUSTRY BABY”, bringing out his collaborator Jack Harlow for the latter song. Lil Nas X is yet another artist who I’ve always considered a good showman, and his elaborate and very entertaining performance was a Grammy night highlight for me.
Billie Eilish and FINNEAS followed with a performance of the title track from the former’s album “Happier Than Ever”. This is a song that I myself had previously seen performed live at a Global Citizen concert a few months back, and so I knew that Eilish was more than capable of using this song to put on a great show. Unsurprisingly, she nailed it, with a really good performance complete with set changes and a tribute to the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who was on her shirt.
The next couple of performers were Brandi Carlile, Nas, and Chris Stapleton. Carlile performed her Grammy-nominated song “Right On Time”, while Nas performed a medley of “I Can”, “Made You Look”, “One Mic”, and “Rare”, and Stapleton performed the song that won for Best Country Song, “Cold”. All of these performances were pretty solid. I enjoyed Stapleton’s in particular, as even though I don’t listen to much country music, I still thought he put his all into a great performance.
Next up, John Legend, alongside a few performers from Ukraine, performed the song “Free” as a tribute to the country, which is currently in the midst of a war against Russia. The performance was even produced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who appeared in a pre-recorded video to do the introduction. The performance came across, at least to me, as very sincere, and the idea of bringing in performers from Ukraine only added to that.
This wasn’t the only tribute at the show, as two others followed. Lady Gaga performed “Love for Sale” and “Do I Love You?” as a tribute to her friend and collaborator, Tony Bennett. Bennett recently retired from performing, and what will be his last studio album was a collaborative album with Gaga. I found Gaga’s performance to be touching, and I also liked the little touch of having Bennett introduce her. The “In Memoriam” segment, performed by Cynthia Erivo, Ben Platt, Leslie Odom, Jr., and Rachel Zegler, followed. It contained “rest in peace” messages to many people who we’ve lost in the past year, including Meat Loaf, DMX, and many others. A short video of and about the aforementioned Hawkins was also shown, as the Foo Fighters were slated to perform prior to his passing.
Next came Album of the Year winner Jon Batiste. He won the most awards of the night, with five, and Trevor Noah considered his performance the audience’s chance to see why he was able to win so big. He performed “FREEDOM”, and did so with much theatricality and energy. Again, I’m not very familiar with his work, but this performance was very good. If the album is anything like the performance, then I completely get why it won Album of the Year.
Next up was Justin Bieber. I thought the decision to open his performance to start his performance of “Peaches” as a ballad was a bit of an odd choice, and the censorship during the performance was a bit sloppier than I would have liked. However, once the song slid back into its original R&B groove, the performance got a lot better, with featured artists Daniel Caesar and Giveon only adding to it. Overall, it was another pretty good showing.
H.E.R. teamed up with Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Travis Barker, and Lenny Kravitz for one big performance near the end, performing a medley of “Damage”, “We Made It”, and “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. For such a wide range of artists, I would say that the performance was pretty cohesive and flowed together better than I thought. I considered it another highlight of the show. To close out, there were two country performances, with Carrie Underwood performing “Ghost Story” and the Brothers Osborne performing “Dead Man’s Curve”.
Overall, the performances were one thing that the Grammys unequivocally got right this year. There wasn’t any one performance that stuck out to me as horrible, or even bad. I thought that everyone was able to help make this year’s show pretty enjoyable. I think that the fact that 2021 was such a good year for popular music definitely helped to make this the case, but it remains true all the same.
