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Postponed from January because of the
coronavirus pandemic, the highest awards in the music business
have had to rethink every aspect of a ceremony that is watched
as much for its performances as for who takes home the prizes.
"Everything has to be reinvented," said Melinda Newman,
Billboard's executive editor for the West Coast and Nashville.
"People do look to the Grammys for these special moments that
they have created over the decades, whether it was Beyonce
performing with Prince or Elton John and Eminem. I don't know if
you can do that during a pandemic," Newman added.
Beyonce has a leading nine nominations this year but is not
among the list of performers announced by the show's new
producers.
Album of the year contenders Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa, along
with Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Miranda Lambert and Harry Styles,
will be among the performers.
Some will be live, in venues in and around the downtown Los
Angeles Convention Center, and some pre-recorded, but there will
not be the usual red carpet or live audience of thousands of
fans, musicians and industry executives.
Host Trevor Noah of "The Daily Show" says the three-hour
telecast on CBS will be different from anything seen before at
the Grammys.
"They have figured out how to make an awards show for the time
as opposed to trying to crowbar an awards show into it," he said
last week.
"It's not Zoom, it's not pandemicky ... The bands are sort of
going to be performing for each other," Noah said.
Some of the awards will be presented by bartenders and others
who work in music venues that have been crushed by the pandemic
and the cancellations of tours and live concerts.
The wide range of nominees in the top four categories - album,
record, song of the year, and best new artist - presages a night
of suspense with winners hard to predict, particularly given the
stunning snub of the Weeknd. Some 11,000 voting members of the
Recording Academy choose the winners.
Few pundits expect any one artist to dominate in the way Eilish
did in 2020, when the "Bad Guy" teen swept all four top awards.
Alex Suskind, a senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, said he
was looking forward to seeing K-pop phenomenon BTS, along with
rapper Megan Thee Stallion who is up for best new artist and
record of the year for her "Savage" remix with Beyonce.
"No one has had a bigger year in music than Megan Thee Stallion.
My guess is she will perform 'WAP' with Cardi B," Suskind added,
referring to the pair's raunchy No. 1 single last summer.
BTS is up for its first major Grammy award, competing for best
pop group performance with English language hit "Dynamite"
against veterans like Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande for "Rain on
Me," Justin Bieber for "Intentions," and Swift's "Exile."
"That's a very tough category," said Suskind. "I still don't
know if the Recording Academy has quite come around to K-pop
despite it having made huge inroads in America."
The Grammy Awards will be broadcast live on CBS television on
Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Matthew
Lewis)
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