The Grammy Telecast

And the big winner tonight is...THE RAIN!

You have no idea what is going on here, it's positively apocalyptic, it's supposed to come down for three days straight and this ain't no east coast rain, it's coming down like God and everyone in heaven is throwing down buckets.

Did the rain play a part in the arrest of Killer Mike? Was he just trying to get out of the wet? Isn't it amazing that you get arrested and it's world news, but the fact that you just won a couple of Grammys? That's already been forgotten.

I don't need to piss on the Grammys, Jay Z already did a good job of that. And in truth it was a pretty good show as these things go, but that's just the point, "as these things go"... Which means network television with commercials trying for broad appeal to garner enough viewers that they will meet the number sold to advertisers. And that paradigm is dead.

I never watch TV in real time, and I wonder how people can, with all the spots. Only in TV can the big breakthrough be the addition of ads to streaming services. That'd be like adding ads to Spotify. You hear ads on the free tier, if you're a schnorrer, but on TV streaming you have to pay to endure commercials. Talk about a backward move. Once you're beholden to Wall Street, once you take your focus off satiating your customers, you're on the wrong path. That's how we got into this mess, with overpriced CDs containing one hit single. The public was pissed, but the labels were myopically rolling in dough until file-sharing came along and they weren't. Anger the public at your peril. The key is to get ahead of the public, provide something they don't even know they want, underpromise and overdeliver, not the opposite.

And in truth I wasn't even going to watch the show until CNNi recruited me to comment when it was done. And it wasn't an endurance test, then again I spent so much time scrolling on my phone.

This was not Ken Ehrlich's Grammy show, thank god. No endless "Grammy moments," you know, the dreaded duets. The show moved along, except for Trevor Noah's execrable monologue. But I can't say everything was worth seeing.

They had it backward, Billy Joel should have opened the show and Dua Lipa should have closed it. Because by time Lipa got out of the cage and was through dancing my e-mail was blowing up with people complaining. What has this got to do with music? The production numbers were edgy and salacious, but otherwise they were no different from variety shows of the sixties, of the fifties! Or the MTV eighties and nineties.

This show was made like the internet doesn't exist, like the landscape hasn't been completely altered in the twenty first century. Now distribution is open to everybody and the stars' music has less reach than any time in the era of broadcast. But don't let the truth get in the way of making a show.

What was wrong with this telecast was it didn't capture the zeitgeist. It was all about the Spotify Top 50 when in truth the hits are garnering less audience every year. You no longer have to listen to anything you don't want to. Which just might be almost all the music on this show. Vapid pop. These might be the biggest stars we've got, but they don't compare to the size of the stars of yore, irrelevant of the statistics their PR people keep forcing down our throat.

Everyone agrees with the fact that the Tracy Chapman/Luke Combs duet was the highlight of the night. But what was really interesting was when they panned to the audience, all the stars. THEY WERE ALL SINGING ALONG! This was the only time we saw this all night. That's the difference between a hit of yesteryear and one of today. Also, isn't it interesting that a simple acoustic number with some chord changes and hooks was triumphant. It's like we've lost the formula.

Joni Mitchell sang surprisingly well for someone who told us for two decades she couldn't, sing that is. And Burna Boy was a pleasant surprise.

I'm a Billy Joel fan, but couldn't someone tell him that new number is not a hit? Also, closing with "You May Be Right" was like the Beatles closing with "Hey Bulldog."

Now if I want to be honest, a lot of other genres were recognized in the pre-show, but unless you won an award, or are related to or work with the winner, no one knows and no one cares. They won't put this music on the telecast, it's not broad enough. But broad to everybody was pre-FM, and then the twenty years of MTV. The best stuff is always outside. True fans would pooh-pooh so many of today's hits, they're looking for something more fulfilling.

As for Taylor Swift announcing the release of her new album... This reminded me of nothing so much as Macy Gray stitching the drop date of her new album on the back of her dress at the VMAs. That's when the VMAs jumped the shark. And I'm not saying the Grammys have much gravitas, but why hijack it for personal reasons?

But it's Swift's year and I'm a loser for saying anything negative.

That's the world we live in, if your analysis is contrary to that of the fans, you're an object of ridicule, which is why so many shut up.

The tribute to Tina Turner was just plain awful.

Celine Dion... Talk about gravitas. Supposedly she was too ill to go on the road, it was a complete surprise. And unlike too many on the floor she owned the aging process, she looked like a woman, she looked like a star. Can't say I'm a big fan, but I will say her music penetrated the public more than that of any recent hitmaker. Our heart will go on with Celine.

Harvey Mason, Jr. was great at Musicares, here not so much. You don't start a speech by congratulating the show you're on. We watched it, we didn't need a replay. You start with the hit, you grab the audience right away, it's show business number one. Mason's delivery was pretty good, quick and relatively lighthearted, but the speech was positively awful.

And why didn't U2 play a song from "Achtung Baby," since that's what they're playing at the Sphere? You've got to realize, most people are watching with crap sound, they can hardly recognize the hits, help them out.

Who won?

It's already been forgotten, or at least it will be in a day or two. It's not that important to the public,

So what we had here was a carnival show. Deep thinkers anonymous. I wouldn't want to take political advice from a single one of them. They made the college graduates milking tech and finance look good. But it used to be the musicians were seers, if you wanted to know which way the wind blew, you turned on the radio, you listened to a record. Music was the anti, a commentary on the system, not the system itself.

Yes, this was a CBS show.

Oh, I forgot Annie Lennox singing Sinead's song (I know it was written by Prince, no need to hassle me). Good, better than Stevie Wonder's numbers, but...

It's an impossible task, making a great Grammy show. Not only can you not please everybody, the public is dumb, and the televised awards reward dumb, when it's intelligent in the cracks that people yearn for and cling to. It's the lifers, who channel the gods, who are ultimately remembered. People who've given up on the hit parade and are following their muse.

So the Grammy show has improved. Not a heavy lift, it was so damn bad before.

But it's out of time. It's like selling CDs. Do you even have a player? Do you even subscribe to cable? Do you even know what channel CBS is on?

There used to be something happening here. In music. And what it was wasn't exactly clear. But we knew that music was the bleeding edge, that it was peopled by those who questioned, most of whom didn't even make tracks to become hits. And they call so much of that music "classic rock." But that also includes Leonard Cohen, who never had a hit single. Ditto Tom Waits. Today's hit music vertical is so narrow as to leave no room for the aforementioned gravitas. For that you have to dig deeper. And the good thing is people are. And other than maybe Burna Boy, they didn't get turned on to any artist tonight that they didn't already know, that they might have already discarded.

We want more. And in truth, people are doing their best to deliver it. But they're not signed by major labels, they're not on this show. They're doing it their own way and their audience is building slowly, usually live. Now you build it on the road, not with recordings.

The times have changed, but the Grammy telecast has not. If this is a snapshot of where music is today, god help me. But thank god it's not. It may be nearly impossible to ferret out the good stuff, but that's coming, we can't continue to live in the wilderness forever. Too many people have already jumped ship. I know kids who don't listen to music. Period. That used to be unheard of, not today. It's got to be so powerful, so desirable, so informative that it's irresistible.

You could resist everything on the show tonight.

Except, of course, "Fast Car." But that's from 1988.

And the guy who signed her, Brian Koppelman, is now famous for "Billions," he left music behind. And that tells you everything you need to know. The zeitgeist is contained in streaming TV, where they tell stories that inform and titillate and surprise us. Every time I get together with people they want to talk streaming TV, not music. Even youngsters.

And the music business continues merrily along with blinders on.

Thank god the barrier to entry is so low anybody can play, the square pegs are not squeezed out.

We need more "Square Pegs." Hell, isn't that where Sarah Jessica Parker got her TV start? On a sitcom? She moved on, she grew. I wish I could say the same about the "artists" who performed tonight.


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