The 2011 Grammy Mostly-Concert-but-Also-Some Awards

I complain about the Grammy's every year. They've become more and more about their live acts than they are about the recognition for winning artists. But I bit my tongue this time around, because the performances were actually all AWESOME. I was already a fan of everyone that performed (besides Martina McBride; sorry, I can't get into country) so it was like one big epic concert I would've loved to be at live. Some of the standouts include Bruno mars, B.O.B & Janelle Monae, the Mumford & Sons part of the M&S, Avett Brothers, & Bob Dylan collaboration, Arcade Fire (more on that later) and of course, Lady gaga. Surprisingly though, what made Gaga's performance stand out was how much it wasn't in your face. In her terms, it was actually pretty tame, but still in no way plain. I mean, unless you consider dancing around in fleshy condom costumes normal. And if you do, please keep that to yourself.
Every once in a while, when the producers remembered these were the freaking Grammy's, they gave out an award or two. There were a couple of pleasant surprises, and my favorite of those was Justin Bieber not winning either of the two awards for which he was nominated. Does the kid sell? Yes. Does he have millions of devoted fans? Inexplicably, yes. Does he make quality music? No. I'm proud of the music industry for at least realizing that.
Hurray for Lady Gaga, she won Best Pop Vocal Album for The Fame Monster. And I'm all for rooting for the underdog, but was anyone else a little annoyed that Esperanza Spalding won Best New Artist? I've never heard her, I'm sure she's good, but I think that category belonged to Drake, hands down. Also: if I hear "Need You Now" one more time, anywhere, I'll break out in hives.
My favorite moment of the night was the presentation for Album of the Year. I was never much of an Arcade Fire fan, but their album The Suburbs opened me up to them a lot more, and the singles off of it ("Ready to Start" and "The Suburbs") are two of my favorite songs at the moment. Arcade Fire is the first band to win Album of the Year without being signed to a major label, which goes to show that you don't need to do extremely well in the mainstream (coughjustinbiebercough) to be recognized for your work. I loved seeing how shocked they were to win, and it gave them such an amazing energy to close out the show with "Ready to Start". They were smiling from ear to ear the whole performance, and that made me happy =]
All in all, I enjoyed this year's Grammy's a lot more than I usually do. Besides Esperanza Spalding and "Need You Now", I was pretty content with all the winners. Or as Lea Michelle would say, "wimmers." I'll leave you with Arcade Fire's win and surprise post-win performance, because it was just that awesome. Til next time =]