Wanting fairly a bit like a wizard casting a curse, Chappell Roan accepted her first ever Grammy by criticizing the music trade. Upon being named Finest New Artist finally evening’s ceremony, the 26-year-old singer took to the stage in a sharp cap (which promptly fell to the ground) and a gown that was scrunched into pearlescent folds. Studying from a pocket book, she recalled being dropped from her first file deal in 2020 and feeling “betrayed by the system.” She urged labels to cease exploiting artists, by paying a residing wage and offering well being care.
These have been putting phrases to listen to from somebody who, by all appearances, is prospering in “the system.” A theatrical vocal expertise whose songs are barbed with sass and spite, Roan is pop’s biggest success story of the previous yr. She obtained nominations in the entire Grammys’ “large 4” classes, and she or he placed on an opulent, eye-popping efficiency that includes a troupe of rodeo clowns. Crucial although it was, her speech match effectively with a ceremony that felt like a generational changing-of-the-guard, ushering in a brand new class of willful, distinct skills.
Grammys ceremonies are usually shortly forgotten, however this one stands to be remembered for just a few causes. One is that Beyoncé received her first ever Album of the Yr, for her country-inflected album Cowboy Carter. One other is that the Los Angeles fires reshaped the evening: host Trevor Noah repeatedly urged viewers to donate to aid efforts, advert area was given to native companies that had burned down, and a gaggle of firefighters offered the night’s last award. The politics of Donald Trump’s second time period loomed giant as effectively: Noah joked that his deportation is perhaps imminent; Girl Gaga spoke up for transgender visibility; Alicia Keys mentioned, “DEI isn’t a risk; it’s a present.”
However the true shake-up of those Grammys was merely the truth that the telecast felt primarily like a showcase for brand new music—and never for the nostalgic reunions and tributes of previous ceremonies. The tone was set early on when the 25-year-old Sabrina Carpenter placed on a medley of her hits “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” The efficiency performed up Carpenter’s signature attribute, her humor, by having her feign errors and miscues after which regain her composure. In a pretaped phase, she cracked, “I’m simply being myself—with possibly greater hair.”
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Carpenter, like Roan, was nominated for Finest New Artist, and lots of the class’s nominees supplied immediately viral moments. Benson Boone, a 22-year-old glam rocker, acquired his tux torn off after which executed flips in a glistening bodysuit; Raye, a 27-year-old hip-hop–soul fusionist from the U.Ok., crooned and scatted with outstanding finesse in entrance of an old-timey bandstand. Most impressively, the 26-year-old rapper Doechii blazed by means of an eclectic array of vocal methods and bodily postures alongside a legion of dancers in matching fits. Her outré presentation recalled the pioneering rapper Missy Elliott, however she additionally smoldered with a uncommon, know-it-when-you-see it high quality: potential.
This being the Grammys, music historical past was nonetheless an enormous a part of the telecast—however even this yr’s definition of “legacy” felt a bit up to date. After so a few years by which the nice rockers of the twentieth century appeared to run the present, it now seems that the Millennials have gotten eligible for luminary remedy. (The Rolling Stones and the Beatles, centerpieces of many prior Grammy ceremonies, received their awards off digital camera.) Girl Gaga and Bruno Mars, appearing like revered statespeople, carried out a haunting rendition of the Mamas & the Papas’s “California Dreamin’” in response to the fires. A well-conceived tribute to Quincy Jones spanned the age spectrum: Herbie Hancock and Stevie Marvel shared recollections from behind the piano, however essential contributions additionally got here from Janelle Monae (doing a bodily Michael Jackson impression) and Depraved star Cynthia Erivo (dreamily decoding Frank Sinatra).
The ultimate awards of the evening additionally referred to as to thoughts generational change. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” was named Track of the Yr and File of the Yr—which is just the second time a rap monitor has been honored in both of these classes. These wins, together with Beyoncé’s, will probably be celebrated as deserved however overdue, given the much-publicized problem that Black artists have had within the Grammys’ main classes over time. The Academy might effectively have made important progress in reforming itself to be extra inclusive; a number of presenters took care to notice the 13,000 voting members who selected the winners (and The Weeknd broke his years-long boycott of the Grammys to carry out this time). One other easy issue to remember: Beyoncé, 43, and Lamar, 37, have constructed our bodies of labor whose significance will get, with every passing yr, tougher and tougher to disclaim.
Beneath the entire evolution these Grammys represented was a technological and social one: streaming. Previously few years, established stars and savvy newcomers appear to have discovered that the important thing to success in an period of content material overabundance isn’t to attempt to be as broadly interesting as attainable—it’s to play up one’s personal persona, ambition, and even weirdness. Cowboy Carter, a genre-blending opus that triggered consternation within the country-music world, is one instance of that method. Dressing like Merlin and demanding extra of the trade that’s celebrating you is, fairly delightfully, one other.
