Grammy night

The Grammys were on tonight! Of course I watched the show. I love the variety of musical performances. it's as much a celebration of the diversity of music as it is an award show. Plus you never really know what's going to happen or how the show will go.

Heck, just seeing Lady Gaga's many costume changes makes watching the Grammys worthwhile, for me :) She showed up on the red carpet (and on stage) being carried in an egg-like thing. Apparently she was incubating in preparation for tonight's performance, as perhaps a priestess would before an important ritual. The outfit she wore onstage also ended up a little sheerer than perhaps she'd planned - those stage lights are very bright. How is this not entertaining? :)

I enjoyed this award show and actually made it all the way through, at least until bedtime. Muse performed, as well as Lady Gaga, Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers, Bob Dylan, Cee Lo Green (looking and surrounded by muppets, including a puppy muppet!), Katy Perry, Eminem with Rihanna, Skylar Grey - who outperformed Rihanna, possibly because Rihanna was sick - and Dr. Dre, Mick Jagger, Barbara Streisand, Arcade Fire, and more. How awesome is that? Well, ok, I was bored while Barbara Streisand sang, and I didn't really like the first Arcade Fire song, but I enjoyed the rest.

One thing that surprised me was the number of non-musical television stars announcing performers. Eva Longoria, for example, presented the Biebs and Usher and she's not a musicians or in any way connected to music as far as I know. Each of these non-musical performers (including Neil Patrick Harris) were great famous and lovely eye-candy, of course, so I guess that's enough.

As an aside, I still don't consider the Biebs an actor. Never Say Never is a biography and how much acting does someone have to do to play themselves? His "movie" is the ultimate in capitalistic endeavours: the kid is 16 and his life is ahead of him, but there are buckets of money to be made right now by shooting a biography (that could have been a segment on Born to Be) in unnecessary 3-D.

Back to the Grammys. The only thing I didn't really like was that there were a lot of commercials: one after every live performance. I know they need time to set up the stage for the next act, but at times it felt like there were at least as many, if not more, commercials than show, and I don't like that.

I also watched quite a bit of the red carpet coverage and I'll have a red carpet post up in a couple of days. This award show isn't as stuffy as the other major award shows and it's also not as casual as the MTV Video Music Awards. The people on the red carpet tend to take more chances with their outfits: safe is not the way to go on this red carpet. I loved that Katy Perry brought her grandmother as her escort and had her grandmother's cane bedazzled, making it a fitting, sparkly accessory on the red carpet. There's nothing safe about a bedazzled cane.