Here we got the "The 60th Annual Grammy Awards", the biggest night in music from 2018 if you want to call it that. It ran for over 2.5 hours and that does not even include commercial breaks, so really really long. The director here is Louis J. Horvitz as usual and the show was nominated for 2 Emmys without winning one of the two. Host is late night show host James Corden and this was the second time he hosted. Well, I am not a fan of him honestly, but he was okay this time, clearly helped by some pretty great comedic material. The subway scene with Sting and Shaggy was solid overall and I also liked how he included his parents this time. Two or three okay moments for good host writing include in here. Now as for the winners, I am not really too thrilled. The show began with Rihanna winning, enough said, even if luckily it wasn't for the garbage number she played live on stage later on. I don't care a lot about Bruno Mars, so no real opinion about him being the big winner that night. I find him a bit overrated though, even if most of his competition is not any better. He does remind me a bit, also physically, of this generation's Michael Jackson. Now also success-wise I suppose after his triumphs that night. Jay-Z who had the most nominations was just watching Mars win constantly. And honestly Ed Sheeran winning anything just feels wrong, he is so overrated. Some of the stuff I liked includes the Johnny Cash 20 years ago reference when he won Best Country Album and I guess the 2018 winner wasn't too shabby either from what I heard from him. Sting playing his Englishman is always a success, even if this was the first time when I really realized he has gotten pretty old now too. And Don't Cry for Me Argentina is always a triumph. On a more general note, I was really struggling with many of the previous ceremonies because they felt so much more about the performances than about the awards and I think with the 2018 version, this was not so bad luckily and it felt at least a bit like an awards show a lot of the time. But there were also bad moments in terms of performances that I mentioned already. Another would be the song with the phone number right near the very end. Suicide prevention number? At least it was okay to call it a tribute Cornell (especially him!) and Bennington, but still it felt fairly pretentious and try-hard with all these people in the same shirt on stage. Shame Alessia Cara was not used for a better moment here, very stunning Best New Artist winner, I hope she can have a glorious career and I like her. But she should stop with saying stuff like she doesn't manage acceptance (speeche)s, when she does it so effortlessly really.
U2 was rather disappointing with their outside performance I must say. Same about Lady Gaga. I just can't stand her, so probably a bit biased here. Nice to see Anna Kendrick and Hailee Steinfeld here, even if I must say I definitely prefer the latter to focus more on her movie career. She is such a great actress for her age and honestly not a great singer. Then again the defining young female singers of this era have shown that you don't need to be a great singer to really make an impact, so yeah I don't know. Again I could mention Sheeran, even if he is a male. One more thing I liked is that they really got many older singers on stage here and they sure made an impact a lot of the time. You can check the list for yourself. It was also the night of interesting (lets call them that) duets. This includes not just Johnny Legend and Tony Bennett presenting an award, but also duets by Sting and Shaggy (even if Sting was better alone) plus Miley Cyrus and Elton John. Yep! I am honestly happy to see Miley the way she looks now. She seemed somehow at peace with herself and we will see what she has coming up in the future. I like her a lot. Always have, always will. Back to host Corden, I would like to mention his pretty funny Obama (not!) introduction. That was funny admittedly. But I am glad he wasn't really there because honestly then I probably would have given the event even less stars. It was already really painful to see some of the Trump bashing. The best example was of course late night host Trevor Noah and honestly with all the bad you can say about Corden, I am honestly happy Noah wasn't hosting. Feels pretty bad to see these guys in charge now with the heritage of Carson, Letterman, Leno... O tempora, o mores! Back to Trump, it was still a pain in the butt of the liberal music industry that he was President, so the sequence when we have all kinds of musicians quote parts of a certain libel book about Donald's presidency was not entirely unexpected, but it felt completely wrong and I was disgusted. The absolute negative highlight was when even sore loser Hillary showed up at the end. This was really when i was ttoally close to giving this ceremony just one star out of three and honestly without it, I would have even considered 3, which means 6 out of 10.
Back to the music, I am quite a Sam Smith fan, but I found him also underwhelming that night. Maybe the problem was also the song that is nowhere near on par with his works that had him dominated the Grammys and win an Oscar. I wonder if Lady Gaga still fumes he took it. I still want to emphasize that I always for including as many awards as possible in a show and that needs to be said as there are still many Grammys not handed out during this even despite how long it goes. So yeah, the less music the better in my opinion. No Grammy winner should be put above another. What else can I say about this one. It's been a lot already. Oh yeah nice for me to see that Kraftwerk won a Grammy here as they are from Germany like myself and not undeserving looking at how long they have been making music now. LCD Soundsystem cool winners too. Such a shame none of these weren't getting any screen time. Same for Tony Bennett taking another over half a century after his first Grammy. And the Stones. Carrie Fisher got one posthumous as well, but I will not mention any more winners as you can check these out for yourself and see the list and which of your favorites won. Nick Cave did not win any of his nominations this time. I think that would be all then. To sum it all up, let me emphasize that the less politics the better should be a guideline for future ceremonies, but now the Trump dust has really settled as he is deep into his second half as President already, so maybe they will include that less and less hopefully. Not just at the Grammys, but in general. Aside from that, I believe this was a better Grammys ceremony again compared to some other previous editions and I hope they can keep going like that and improvement is visible and will stay visible. But if you take a look at the rating, you also see that it is still a long way to go as if I say this is better than others, this also means that it is more because others were really bad than because this one was really good. It certainly was not, so I give it a thumbs-down as a whole and don't recommend checking it out. That's all folks!
U2 was rather disappointing with their outside performance I must say. Same about Lady Gaga. I just can't stand her, so probably a bit biased here. Nice to see Anna Kendrick and Hailee Steinfeld here, even if I must say I definitely prefer the latter to focus more on her movie career. She is such a great actress for her age and honestly not a great singer. Then again the defining young female singers of this era have shown that you don't need to be a great singer to really make an impact, so yeah I don't know. Again I could mention Sheeran, even if he is a male. One more thing I liked is that they really got many older singers on stage here and they sure made an impact a lot of the time. You can check the list for yourself. It was also the night of interesting (lets call them that) duets. This includes not just Johnny Legend and Tony Bennett presenting an award, but also duets by Sting and Shaggy (even if Sting was better alone) plus Miley Cyrus and Elton John. Yep! I am honestly happy to see Miley the way she looks now. She seemed somehow at peace with herself and we will see what she has coming up in the future. I like her a lot. Always have, always will. Back to host Corden, I would like to mention his pretty funny Obama (not!) introduction. That was funny admittedly. But I am glad he wasn't really there because honestly then I probably would have given the event even less stars. It was already really painful to see some of the Trump bashing. The best example was of course late night host Trevor Noah and honestly with all the bad you can say about Corden, I am honestly happy Noah wasn't hosting. Feels pretty bad to see these guys in charge now with the heritage of Carson, Letterman, Leno... O tempora, o mores! Back to Trump, it was still a pain in the butt of the liberal music industry that he was President, so the sequence when we have all kinds of musicians quote parts of a certain libel book about Donald's presidency was not entirely unexpected, but it felt completely wrong and I was disgusted. The absolute negative highlight was when even sore loser Hillary showed up at the end. This was really when i was ttoally close to giving this ceremony just one star out of three and honestly without it, I would have even considered 3, which means 6 out of 10.
Back to the music, I am quite a Sam Smith fan, but I found him also underwhelming that night. Maybe the problem was also the song that is nowhere near on par with his works that had him dominated the Grammys and win an Oscar. I wonder if Lady Gaga still fumes he took it. I still want to emphasize that I always for including as many awards as possible in a show and that needs to be said as there are still many Grammys not handed out during this even despite how long it goes. So yeah, the less music the better in my opinion. No Grammy winner should be put above another. What else can I say about this one. It's been a lot already. Oh yeah nice for me to see that Kraftwerk won a Grammy here as they are from Germany like myself and not undeserving looking at how long they have been making music now. LCD Soundsystem cool winners too. Such a shame none of these weren't getting any screen time. Same for Tony Bennett taking another over half a century after his first Grammy. And the Stones. Carrie Fisher got one posthumous as well, but I will not mention any more winners as you can check these out for yourself and see the list and which of your favorites won. Nick Cave did not win any of his nominations this time. I think that would be all then. To sum it all up, let me emphasize that the less politics the better should be a guideline for future ceremonies, but now the Trump dust has really settled as he is deep into his second half as President already, so maybe they will include that less and less hopefully. Not just at the Grammys, but in general. Aside from that, I believe this was a better Grammys ceremony again compared to some other previous editions and I hope they can keep going like that and improvement is visible and will stay visible. But if you take a look at the rating, you also see that it is still a long way to go as if I say this is better than others, this also means that it is more because others were really bad than because this one was really good. It certainly was not, so I give it a thumbs-down as a whole and don't recommend checking it out. That's all folks!
