With only a handful of actual awards handed out on television, The Grammys did its utmost best to convince us nothing is wrong with the music business. Again. It's kind of like the orchestra on the Titanic-if the Titanic took 20 years to sink.
I'll be honest. I didn't watch all of The Grammys. I can only take it in doses of about three-minutes, max. So there was a lot of back-and-forth trying to keep my lunch from repeating on me.
What I did see reminded me of the 1978 classic Animal House.
"Remain Calm! All is well!!" cries Kevin Bacon's character, in vain, before he's flattened.
Here are a few random comments on moments I did manage to watch:
There's no denying, under all the make-up and Jello, Lady Gaga is a seriously talented artist. But was she the best choice to pull off a David Bowie tribute? Why not include a variety of different artists from different genres and show how his music was interpreted differently by each performer? Just because he was Ziggy doesn't mean the entire thing has to be Space Oddity.
As much as I loved The Eagles and the late Glenn Frey, the surviving members looked sorely out of place on last night's telecast. Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, Timothy Schmit, Joe Walsh and Jackson Browne looked like your grandfathers and uncles jumping on stage in the middle of your bar mitzvah.
And what was up with the audio? There's something totally "Spinal Tap" about a music show having sound problems. Sure, things go wrong with live broadcasts, but at times it felt like we were watching The International Silver String Submarine Band.
Couldn't the producers have had a sound tech a few feet from Adele in case of emergency? How hard would it have been for a guy who was kneeling next to the stage to pop up and right the mic that fell into the piano?
One second of awkward stage dude might have spared everyone, Adele especially, five plus minutes of feeling like you're watching a suspension bridge swaying back and forth in heavy winds.
In spite of borrowing heavily from the likes of James Brown and The Time, Bruno Mars' "Uptown Funk" is definitely a catchy tune. But, aside from the fact we're sick to death of it by now, to give Song of The Year to a single that was released nearly 18 months ago, in November 2014, before there was a verdict in Ferguson, makes Bruno Mars seem like a tribute band.
Let's face it; The Grammys are only relevant to the six people left in the music business. And it shows.
Making a point to call out streaming services like Spotify for not supporting artists, when the entire history of The Grammys has been dedicated solely to the support and enrichment of a select handful of multi-millionaires, is a tad hypocritical.
If they want to maintain relevance, why not let a few up and coming indie bands/artists play in between the mega stars? Perhaps include a category for viral song/album of the year? Anything but the status quo will do for now, til we figure out how kill the Internet.
Til then, if you want to watch music that's alive and vibrant, turn off your television, go down to the local pub and take in the splendor of a band busting their ass to entertain you for fifty bucks. Someday, they may be on an awards show and you can talk about how much better they were when they were making fifty bucks. If you want to hold a seance at the bedside of the clinically dead music business, by all means, watch The Grammys.