Live Grammy Awards updates from the LA Times:
7:51: Song of the year goes to Fun.'s "We Are Young" featuring Janelle Monae.
7:47 p.m.: When the Grammys get things right, they still manage to get things wrong. Miguel is an R&B voice worth paying attention to. He’s old-fashioned without being tied to a time period and knows how to swing and soon with deftness. He’s the exact sort of newer voice the Grammys should be championing, but here they paired him with rapper Wiz Khalifa for his "Adorn," as if producers were unsure whether Miguel was a big-enough name to appear solo. Yes, Khalifa is on the song’s remix, but let Miguel have the spotlight for his song of the year-nominated tune.
Moments later, Carrie Underwood received the award for country solo performance for her “Blown Away.”
7:43 p.m.: Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley, who just happen to be touring together (golly, what a coincidence) gave the Grammys their first medley of the night. Underneath what looked like a giant dead Christmas tree, Lambert sang her ballad “Over You.” Lambert’s better when she’s pretending she’s crazy, but her voice isn’t anything to trifle with. Yet by the time Bentley appeared onstage, Lambert’s melody was starting to sound too close to Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” to not be daydreaming of better songs. Bentley’s “Home,” however, was a real mismatch here. With its images of blood-scarred landscapes, this is a song written to be played at military tributes, not awards shows.
7:32 p.m.(Central time): Wait…. who changed the channel to “Glee”? Oh, never mind, that’s just Fun., stomping and hollering over any sense of melody or subtlety. Fun. is upbeat, but upbeat at its most aggressive. Give Fun. a verse, and it’ll send you back a choir and a song filled with shout-outs built for sporting events. As evidence, the band offered its “Carry On” at the Grammys, and just to make sure that everyone knew the band was taking the Grammys really seriously, its members allowed themselves to get doused in water. They suffer for their good-time party songs.
7:30 p.m.: Twenty minutes in and the Grammys have their first head-scratcher. The Grammy for pop solo performance went to Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” from her “Live at the Royal Albert Hall” disc. Adele, of course, was the big winner last year, and sneaking in an older track via a live disc simply seemed the way to get her back onstage. In winning, she bested Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” among others.
“Thank you so much,” said Adele. “This is amazing. I just wanted to come and be part of the night. I loved it last year, obviously.”
7:22 p.m.: After a lengthy (whew) opening speech from LL Cool J, in which he referenced the passing last year of Whitney Houston but had no fun or made no jokes otherwise, the show continued down its offend-no-one path. Ed Sheeran, a little Cocker Spaniel of a singer-songwriter, sang his nominated number “The A Team.” It aims for grand statements, but it largely just kind of strums along. With all its references to angels -- flying angels, freezing cold angels, dying angels -- this was a sudden momentum killer after Swift’s Halloween show. But if you’re going to write a song with important-sounding lyrics with angels, may as well have Elton John to play along.
7:05 p.m. (Central time): The Grammys are definitely opting for frivolous from the get-go in 2013. After using Bruce Springsteen last year to open the show with a somber, uplifting rock number, “We Take Care of Our Own,” producers this year decided to play dress-up with Taylor Swift. The country-turned-pop star went all “Alice in Wonderland” for her take on “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” full of surrealist art swirls and a Mad Hatter. What all of this had to do with a featherweight breakup album, I’m all ears, but when it comes to spectacle, Swift definitely seems to be taking a page from Lady Gaga. So perhaps this is one of the weirdest Grammy openings in recent memory. Rarely have the Grammys presented someone so normal in such an odd setting.
6:59 p.m.: Welcome to the 2013 Pop & Hiss live blog of the Grammy Awards. The Black Keys are off to a fast start in the race for album of the year, as the band earlier today won rock album for "El Camino" and rock song for "Lonely Boy."
In winning rock song, the Black Keys bested tracks from fellow album of the year nominees Jack White and Mumford & Sons, which, for those looking for a Grammy story line, would seem to set the stage for a Frank Ocean/Black Keys showdown for the top Grammy prize.
In some ways, Ocean is the biggest story of the year -- he stands at the heart of a new R&B movement that emphasizes thoughtfulness and sexual tolerance over booty shaking -- but he's also an unlikely album-of-the-year candidate. His songs emphasize introspection and experimentation, where beats are muffled and thoughts are complex. And he's not a million-plus seller. -- LA Times
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Black Keys, Skrillez win big early awards
Skrillex and the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach were the big early winners at the 55th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles with three awards.
The vast majority of the 81 awards were handed out before the television broadcast, and included some memorable moments:
Skrillex in accepting an award for his electronic-dance-music single and album, both titled “Bangarang”: “Thanks for letting us do it the weird way.”
Bonnie Raitt on her upset in the Americana category over Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers, among others: “I was not expecting this. I have enough!”
Grammy Awards: Fun. wins song of the year
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Grammy Awards: Fun. wins song of the year
