The most fabulous time in the music industry has arrived, the awards in which famous people you have already heard of become even more famous after being bestowed with a golden statue celebrating a long-outdated technology, and Grammy Dad Neil Portnow lectures us about the dangers of music piracy (total economic collapse and/or mildly upsetting Neil Portnow). And the LIVE PERFORMANCES! Oh the live performances. Grab some popcorn to eat/throw, sit your ass down and let us hold your hand breathlessly through this no-doubt edifying televised awards event. It’s Jezebel’s Grammys live blog!
6:35 PM The Best Rap Grammy did not go to Iggy Azalea. But it did go to Eminem! The Grammy voters never CEASE with the surprises, amirite? Such jokesters, these guys!
7:16 PM Just noticed this:
Sia knows we know what she looks like, right? Like, we know what she looks like. But you gotta give it up to the dedication.
7:39 PM Ryan Seacrest is hosting the red carpet, as he does. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West show up, as they do. Kim is wearing a Gaultier that looks like a bathrobe. Kanye is wearing a smoking jacket that looks like a smoking jacket. Their chests are gleaming. Seacrest asks them how they ended up at the waffle house, per the recent viral photo of the duo dining at a waffle house with Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. Kim’s answer is, essentially, “We were hungry.” The world turns.
7:57 PM Beyoncé has won her second Grammy of the night: “Drunk in Love,” with Jay-Z, won “Best R&B Song.” Her first was for “Best Surround Sound Album,” which, sure.
8:01 PM They didn’t air the Rap Grammys but they are opening with AC/DC doing a brand new song that sounds like a trillion-year-old song, which basically sums up how our night is going to go.
8:09 PM LL has anointed Taylor Swift “T.Swizzle” and my pain is real. Iggy loses the “Best New Artist” Grammy to Sam Smith, who seems like he might cry? Very teary dude.
8:17 PM Anna Kendrick is cool but that Ariana Grande intro was deeply passionless. Tiny Baby Ariana Grande, though! Her voice is like floating, weightless, on a pillow of cotton from a late spring dandelion. She should never not perform among glowing neon planetarium stalagmites. She’s gonna end this performance by flying up into the sky, correct? I think I just fell in love with one of those stalagmites.
8:23 PM Tom Jones and Jessie J are attacking us, each and every one, through the television with this “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” duet. This is what Gaga and Bennett hath wrought, and it’s NOT FUCKING OKAY. But now we know that Chrissy Teigen, goddess of the internet, does not really know the words, which is awesome!
8:26 Pharrell won something and said something but even he wasn’t sure. Taylor Swift did the Arsenio fist pump in order to show everyone what a great sport. I still can’t believe it is 2015 and a song with “(Darkchild Version)” in the title was up for a Grammy. Rodney doing his thing.
8:36 PM Miranda Lambert, singing about her little red wagon, gets bleeped for a whole verse. Unfamiliar with the song, the man I live with suggested that she maybe just “dropped some Roe v Wade realness.” Unfortunately, it was not a line about choice, but it was a line with the shocking s-word.
Also, Sam Smith is cleaning up thus far, with another win for Best Pop Vocal Album. “It was only until that I started being myself that the music started to flow, and that people started to listen,” he says.
8:44 PM Kanye’s doing “Only One” from the inside of a wormhole that imbues everything it touches with autotune, not just his voice but also his velour Juicy Couture by Margiela sweats, cause he just hit the gym real quick between the carpet and the stage. Adidas Yeezys look like the Marty McFly shoe as interpreted by Creative Recreation, no? Sorry, doing everything possible to avoid thinking about this song, which is bad. It is.
8:50 PM Madonna’s going for matador/minotaur but is actually giving us Maleficent. Regardless, she, her gospel assistants, and all 46 of her backing tracks sound good as hell.
8:55 PM Beck is still alive? That’s great.
9:02 PM Nile Rodgers and Smokey Robinson honor George Harrison for a Lifetime Acheivement and hand off the Best R&B Performance to Beyoncé for “Drunk in Love,” which she dedicates to her “beloved husband,” Blue, and the Beyhive. Her voice quivers, because she is our queen.
9:06 PM Earlier I realized that Sheeran was kinda fly after seeing that his arms are covered in sleeve tats, but now he is back to singing his James Taylor-scoring-a-1991-romantic-comedy-starring John Travolta steez and I must now revoke.
9:08 PM Oh wow yeah John Mayer soloing making that orgasm face ooh yeah John Mayer solo harder baby ew jk no you’re so gross ew.
9:10 PM Ed Sheeran and ELO are playing, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift are in a contest to see who can out-demonstratively turn up in the aisles. Paul is winning so far.
9:15 PM Adam Levine and Gwen Stefani are dueting in a cross-promo with The Voice, where they actually give people advice on how to sing? Both are sounding like they downed a cup of 2% milk before they hit the stage. They look good, though!
9:26 PM Hozier has more songs than just this one (really!), and one day someone will allow him to perform it. But not today.
9:28 PM Here is Annie Lennox singing “I Put a Spell On You,” and absolutely killing. She’s a legend but it’s very hard to take her seriously given her comments on “Strange Fruit” and Beyoncé. Funny how childhood idols can be ruined upon speaking.
9:28 PM Nick Jonas, boy-king of our loins, and that woman with the song about her bum hand off the Best Country Album Grammy to Miranda Lambert. She loves y’all!
9:34 PM Haha wait what is happening how did The Weeknd get on here? And why does he seem like he is delivering this with no serotonin in his system?
9:36 PM Pharrell is definitely tripping balls.
9:38 PM “Obviously I’m at your service, Lord.” Yes, Pharrell is def tripping balls. But also, did he and his dancers just do the Black Lives Matter “hands up” stance? If so, that’s the closest thing to a point of view we’ve gotten all night. Which is extremely disappointing.
9:44 PM Spoke too soon: President Barack Obama dips in to give us a PSA against violence against women and girls. Brooke Axtell, a spoken word artist and domestic violence activist, opens for Katy Perry to tell her story. No snark, holler if you’re crying right now. “Authentic love does not silence, shame, or abuse. If you’re in a relationship with someone who does not honor and respect you, I want you to know that you are worthy of love.”
9:49 PM Katy is ruining this moment, to be honest. They should have showed Obama, let the spoken word lady do her thing, and cut to commercial. Sappy ballads after a powerful testimony from a survivor are not the move. Cheapens the moment. Also: fuck this lyrical ballet shadow shit.
9:52 PM Guess now’s as good a time as any to cut to the Target #MoreMusic Imagine Dragons live via satellite from Las fucking Vegas performance. Everything is garbage and I want to throw it in the trash.
9:59 PM Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett are meeting Jessie J and Tom Jones at the Sands later to throw fisticuffs all the way into 1958.
10:03 PM Usher is singing Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic,” which is 41 years younger than the song Tony and Gaga just did. We’re in the late ’70s now, people! If we’re lucky we’ll make it to the mid-’90s by the end of the broadcast. I’d like to see Dave Grohl cover Stone Temple Pilots.
10:05 PM Stevie dipped in for the harmonica solo and it was beautiful, but the camera people had to go and fuck it up by cutting to Madonna’s diamond grill. Has anyone even received any awards tonight? Why are we even here? Who am I and who is my God?
10:14 PM I know nothing about Eric Church so I will attempt to live-critique this song. Nice banjo intro, very rollicking. His accent sounds actually kind of fake, is he one of those country singers from Jersey who puts on the honkeytonk for show? “My hometown,” that sounds pretty Jersey. I respect the fealty to the working class, and also that he’s putting up images of “Black Lives Matter” protests on the screen. Okay, Eric Church, you can stay. Song is very Mumford as filtered via Tennessee. There is no doubt in my mind my mom listens to this guy’s music.
10:18 PM This is the country segment. Okay. Brandy Clark is playing the kind of country music that people who complain that country has gone too pop like to listen to. Her voice is lovely.
10:21 PM YO framing “FourFiveSeconds” as a country song is absolutely brilliant, and it is, a bit. Is Rihanna a folksinger? Is KANYE a folksinger? Is Paul McCartney an emerging hip-hop artist?
10:30 PM They should let Taylor host next year. She’s the Vanna White of my soul.
10:32 PM Sam Smith is *shoves Sam Smith out of the way* MARY J BLIGE IS ON THE STAAAAGE.
10:35 PM I love Gina Rodriguez but they couldn’t find one of the countless musicians from the, you know, Latin Grammys to introduce Juanes?
10:38 PM Juanes is a god, “Juntos” is a jam, and that was the first Spanish-language performance on the Grammys in ten years, showing yet again why the Grammys are not really reflective of music culture one bit. Also, Prince, who is wearing Liza Minelli’s tangerine lounging pajamas and looks hot as hell.
10:39 PM “Black lives matter” -Prince
10:40 PM Beck, who is still alive, is handed a Grammy by Prince, whose steez Beck at various times has tried to do, which was cute. Kanye tried to go up onstage in Bey’s defense, but went back, which is probably for the best because Beck would definitely have cried.
10:53 PM They’re giving away some kind of award but I’m distracted by 1. That Kristen Wiig- assisted Sia thing that was like a first-year performance art final and 2. Enrique Iglesias, my hot, very boring Spanish boo. Sam Smith won the award, because he is Sam Smith, the Adele of 2015.
11:01 PM Dave Grohl is talking about Dave Letterman and introducing Beck and Chris Martin and I could not give less fucks about this ZZZZZ manstravaganza. What I do care about is THIS:
Proving to me that the Grammys are TRULY irrelevant because seriously, you’re not going to let one of the greatest minds of our generation into your dumb ceremony? He’s even a musician! What did Shia LaBeouf ever do for music, except try to get that movie made about underground New York rapper Cage? Yo Shia, where is that movie tho. Sup.
11:09 PM Sam Smith won Record of the Year. We need an animorph .gif of Taylor and Iggy’s disappointment faces. Sam Smith thanked the man who broke his heart for doing so, since that whole album is about being brokenhearted and now he has four Grammys. Best ex revenge there is. (Ask Adele.)
11:15 PM YESSSS OLD RELIABLE: NEIL PORTNOW’S YEARLY LECTURE TO US ABOUT HOW MP3S ARE KILLING MUSIC. EVERY NIGHT, HE WAKES UP IN A COLD SWEAT, CONSTANT REPETITIVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT SPOTIFY. KEEP ON KEEPING ON, FATHER GRAMMY!
11:19 PM The in memoriam segment includes Maya Angelou, A$AP Yams, Bobby Womack, Robin Williams, and Frankie Knuckles, among many more. One young person is too many young people. RIP Yams.
11:27 PM Beyoncé is here in tulle, the angel of our dreams, singing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” beautifully. By far the most relevant and important moment of the whole night, fuck an award.
11:32 PM We’re gonna outro with Common and John Legend, because their song is topical, and also because they are definitely going to win an Oscar. Remember when the Republicans got mad because the Obamas hosted Common in the White House? Yeah, that happened. Do you hear these verses? Common is just about the least controversial famous rapper they could invite. But you know how this works. The men’s choir singing “glory” is excellent.
11:37 PM And that’s a wrap, everyone. Thanks for joining us at Jezebel for this very long and subdued evening, in which no song exceeded 82 beats per minute! Good night, goddess bless, and see you next awards show (which, by my calculations, is in like three hours).
Image via Getty