February 24, 2003
NEED A HAND WITH THOSE,
NEED A HAND WITH THOSE, NORAH?
The woman whose impossibly sweet voice I fell in love with a year ago, Norah Jones, dominated the Grammy Awards last night, winning all five awards (Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best New Artist, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance) for which she nominated. Not bad for a 23-year-old who, as I've mentioned, was headlining open-mic night at Makor as recently as the fall of 2001. She even bypassed the red carpet in order to avoid a confrontation with that pathetic old hag Joan Rivers. There aren't many people I would root for over my beloved Bruce Springsteen for a Grammy, but Norah's one; I've got a feeling her five Grammys tonight were just a warmup for what's coming for her in the future.
I missed about one third of the show due to my "Oz"-watching duties but regardless, here are my various Grammy observations:
- Great to see Simon & Garfunkel back together and performing one more time- but let's not let this turn into a permanent reunion with albums, tours, etc. The E Street comeback was the exception, not the rule. Got it? Nice to see them introduced by Dustin Hoffman- it would've been a nice touch if he'd arrived on stage on a people-mover to the strains of "Sounds of Silence."
- With all the "battles" that have dominated conversation about hip-hop in the last couple of years, it was refreshing to see Eminem, of all people, thank those rappers who came before and influenced him. But how long before some other rapper starts a fight because they were "slighted" by being left off Em's list? I didn't hear Triumph's name...
- Unintentional comedy of the night: for much of her performance, Sheryl Crow's "NO WAR"-inscripted guitar strap was blocked by the singer's hair, leaving a clearer, more consise message of "WAR."
- Fortunately, the only other presenter to address the Iraq situation onstage was the least-talented man in the room, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst. Durst made the gutsy statement that he hopes the war "goes away as soon as possible," standing up to all those people (namely, no one) who hope for a really, really, long war in Iraq. How about some regime change within Limp Bizkit?
- Speaking of Iraq, shouldn't hindsight caused by recent world events have prevented the victory for Best Country Song by Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning," with its chorus of "I'm not sure I could tell you/the difference between Iraq and Iran"? Or perhaps it's just a victim of the Grammys' long lead time; the song was presumably written before the "Axis of Evil" speech.
- While I hated the constant flashing on the screen of the minor-award winners (there are so many dozens of categories, it wouldn't surprise me if I won a Grammy one of these years), I was happy to see that Stevie Wonder and Take 6 won Best R&B Group Performance for their performance on the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" telethon of Stevie's 1976 classic "Love's In Need of Love Today." Reminds me of when I went to see the composer of "Annie" speak a few years ago, and he told of having won a Best Rap Single Grammy the previous year, for his co-songwriting credit on Jay-Z's version of "Hard Knock Life."
- Best performances of the night? Norah, Bruce, and I guess John Mayer; also loved JT/Yo Yo Ma, and Coldplay with the New York Philharmonic (they're inches away from being a major, major band- Coldplay, I mean. The Philharmonic's already there). Better them than the increasingly tiresome Avril Lavigne, or the soon-to-be-long-forgotten Vanessa Carlton. The strangest? Probably the Springsteen/Van Zandt/Dave Grohl/Elvis Costello performance of "London Calling"- I never thought I'd live long enough to hear Bruce perform a punk song. Maybe the Best Album loss will cause his career to go in a completely different, punk-inflected direction... or maybe not.
- In the segments I watched I heard not a single reference by anyone to the Rhode Island club fire- I guess none of the winners or presenters or hosts was acquainted with any of the members of Great White.
- While the music academy's constituency still largely consists of old white people who aren't exactly in touch with new musical trends, tonight's Awards show that things are at least slowly crawling towards modernity- as evidenced by the victory by the 23-year-old Jones over the 52-year-old Springsteen, after Best Album the last two years went to the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack and Steely Dan's "Two Against Nature." It may be awhile before, say, a rapper wins the top award, but if last night was any indication, the Grammy Awards have at least arrived in the right century, if not the right decade.