03 December 2008

Nick Hornby and the Grammys!

So y'all know about my love for Nick Hornby's "Stuff I've Been Reading Column" which, sadly, is over and done with. The final book collecting the columns released this week titled Shakespeare Wrote for Money and Sarah Vowell wrote the introduction. Ahhhh. Love it.

(gonna try my hand at some sort of live-blogging, here)

I'm a little bummed that my Criminal Minds and CSI:NY are pre-empted for a live Grammy nominations show (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was on at 7pm - my favorite after the Peanuts' Christmas Special) and the Victoria's Secret Runway Show. I think the Grammy announcement is an interesting change - hopefully it will spark some interest in the awards. I'm just a bit underwhelmed by the first two performances: Mariah and Celine. Mariah sang a hit from her Christmas album and just really didn't look like she was into the performance; she sounded pretty good, if a little forced. Then Celine Dion sang "At 17" which is a great song but since she has absolutely no diction you couldn't understand her - if I didn't know what song she was singing I'd have no idea what it was about. It was not an incredibly enjoyable performance.

OK - now the Foo Fighters are singing Carly Simon's "You're so vain" ... um, it's alright and an interesting mash-up. It's not quite what I expect and the rock beat makes the song very flat rather than laid-back. You know, there had to be other award-winning songs in the Hall of Fame that were from the rock genre. Dave Grohl is pretty funny doing the nomination announcements (especially country).

Now that's a performance - Christina Aguilera just blew everyone out of the water. The woman has some chops and sounds incredible singing "I loves you, Porgy." Wow. Does she have a jazz album out? If not, she needs to make one. A very restrained and moving performance in a song that could easily be overdone dramatically; thank you for showing what a Grammy-winning artist should be.

Hmmm...Taylor Swift is singing Brenda Lee's "I'm sorry" (with a seque into one of her own songs, I think) and, dude, I'm sorry but it sounds underrehearsed, undercoached, and smacks of bad high-school show choir. I have a theory about recording artists these days - because few of them have to actually prove themselves by singing live with no voice back-up they rely so much on the recording studio to sound decent. Taylor sounds young, she pushes the vocals, and can't control the wobble when she tries to "jazz" it up. In short: she needs voice and stage performance lessons. She should also not have followed Christina because it made the gap between amazing and mediocre that much wider - that should be blamed on poor programming by the producer. Christina should have closed out the show.

Taylor does do a decent presenting job with my man LL Cool J (love him!) who is probably the only man on Earth who can pull off the golf cap and suit combo.

Ohhh, yeah. "Let the good times roll" with BB King and John Mayer. Umm, what happened to John's hair and creeper moustache? Oh, forget the hair - he's a great guitar player and BB King is such a great musician and a legend. A really great collaborative performance, which is one reason why I like the Grammys - they always have some interesting pairings, like when Joss Stone (before she got "Britney'd") and Melissa Etheridge sang a tribute to Janis Joplin.

The montages before each nomination are pretty cool; a nice way of remembering great moments at the Grammys for those of us who've been watching for a while.

Oh, OK all done and John and BB are going to take it out. I revise my earlier statement - maybe Taylor should have opened the show followed by a lackluster Mariah, unintelligible Celine, a goofy Foo Fighters, awesome Cristina and closed with John and BB. It would have been a better line-up and built nicely rather than showing that your presenter isn't quite ready for prime-time. I think all the nominations were right on the money (rooting for Adele!).

Lingerie time - gotta love Heidi Klum (congrats, Heidi, on your US citizenship)! Good opening, but no offence to Adriana Lima I'd have rather watched Usher's opening dance phrase (because he is so very good) instead of cutting back and forth.

Three kids or no three kids, Heidi can sell lingerie. Damn she has a hot body; some people get all the luck with the genetics.

Kind of a stupid segment about who is the "real" Victoria (dude, was that Debbie Harry?). And then there was an ad for the black VISA credit card - you can actually apply for that like you would a regular VISA? I thought VISA offered that to spenders at of a certain monetary level.

Surprising. The next song is "Baba Lou" (spelling?). Who's the blond with the crazy black tutu? She's not selling it. She actually looks a little bummed - I would be, too, wearing that thing.

Not a big fan of the PINK line, except for the jammies, but the intro was really cute. The styling for the section fits the line except it looks a little like Nanouk of the North got lost at the sorority house. Knitted item alert: check out the gigantic blue and white scarf!

I really like the layout of this show - it even has a little Usher concert in the middle.

The flower segment has some really pretty things. Great styling here as well. Whoa, crazy wings on the last model (I liked the butterly wings on the Aussie model better).

Great close to the show with Heidi in some huge wings like a gift bow.

2 comments:

  1. You don't think Samuel L. Jackson could also pull off the golf cap and suit look?

    ReplyDelete
  2. But he always seems to wear it backward - like it's not really a golf cap.

    ReplyDelete