The Grammys are always an exciting night. Celebrities, gowns, awards and amazing performances are all some of the best parts of the annual show. As always, The Grammys came and went slowly, over a very long three-and-a-half hours. Only a small number of the 83 awards given out last night were actually shown on stage.
Taylor Swift kicked off the red carpet portion and also closed the whole show after she won the Album of the Year award. She became the first woman to win a Grammy for album of the year twice and gave a powerful acceptance speech targeted at young women. She also decided to address her feelings for Kanye West on stage after he took credit for her fame in a rap lyric. If you weren’t aware of the Kanye-Taylor situation, back in 2009 her video for “You Belong With Me” beat out Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” for Best Female Video. She went to the stage to accept the award and then Kanye, out of no where, jumped onstage, grabbed the mic out of Taylor’s hand and said, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you and I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!” Kanye was booed, and celebrities quickly rallied behind Swift fueling a huge beef between the two celebrities.
Everyone’s favorite Adele performed in the middle of the show, sounding not as great as usual. She held it together and later tweeted that “mics fell on the piano strings” making everything “sound out of tune,”. She is still Adele so no one really had a problem with it.
Hip Hop and R&B won big this year. Beyoncé presented the Song of the Year award to “Uptown Funk” collaborators, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson. Kendrick Lamar took home five awards, including best rap album, and had a powerful live performance with a strong political message. Lionel Richie, Music Cares’ Person of The Year, was serenaded with a medley by an amazing cast of today’s biggest pop stars including John Legend and Demi Lovato.
Although the show contained a few exciting instances, the 2016 Grammys received the worst ratings for the show in six years. It came in just shy of last year’s ceremony, which had about 300,000 more viewers, but was still well under 2012’s show of 40 million viewers. Nevertheless, I will continue to tune in every year because I just can’t resist the glamour and gossip of American award shows.