GRAMMY Shockers; Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Kanye and Some Guy Named Beck: Snubs, a big upset and weird business as usual at “music’s biggest night”
Taylor Swift isn’t perfect. Beyoncé (still) can’t win Album of the Year. Kanye West (still) can’t stay in his seat. And British soul apparently never goes out of style.
Those were the four of the big lessons from Sunday’s 57th Annual GRAMMY Awards, a show dominated by “Stay With Me” singer Sam Smith, who scored a night-best four wins, including awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist. Smith’s dominance was a callback of sorts to 2008 when Amy Winehouse, a fellow Brit and soul singer, won the same top three GRAMMY categories. Smith also claimed a GRAMMY for Best Pop Vocal Album for his In the Lonely Hour debut.
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Swift, a three-time nominee, was shut out. Though the night was a rare miss for the country-turned-pop queen, it was actually the second straight GRAMMYs the “Shake It Off” singer went home empty-handed.
Perhaps Beyoncé can feel Swift’s GRAMMY pain. The diva won three GRAMMYs, including awards for R&B Song and R&B Performance, but came up short in the category she’s never been able to claim: Album of the Year.
Beyoncé’s self-titled Beyoncé had been considered a favorite to break the losing streak. Instead, singer-songwriter Beck ended up on stage, winning for his critical but low-profile collection, Morning Phase.
Beck’s upset victory — in a way, the jaw-dropper of the night — was derided by presumably younger Twitter users who made “Who is Beck” a trending topic.
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West, who’d been on his best behavior through two performance sets in his first GRAMMYs appearance since 2009, appeared to side with the Beck-hating Twitterverse when he walked on stage stage, and approached the alt-singer-songwriter as the Album of the Year statuette was presented. But in the other jaw-dropper of the night, West apparently was just having fun.
West being West, the hip-hop artist was having self-referential fun. Instead of crashing Beck’s moment, West was merely doing a goof on the time he did crash Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 Video Music Awards. Then as now, West was reacting to a perceived Beyoncé snub.
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Between the Swift-West callback, the Smith-Winehouse tieback and, in the tradition of Steely Dan, Herbie Hancock and Ray Charles, an Album of the Year win for an older-skewing artist, the biggest lesson of the night was probably this: The GRAMMYs are always so GRAMMYs.
