Just a few quick thoughts about the Grammy Awards:

  • I’m not disappointed by U2’s five wins. In all honesty, while How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was not their best album ever, it was still quite a bit better than a lot of the other nominees. Since NARAS tends to skew on the conservative side of things, U2’s victories were more-or-less a lock.
  • I’m actually quite happy that Kelly Clarkson won her two awards. She’s fun, it seems like she’s still quite grounded, and she’s got one hell of a set of pipes.
  • Stevie Wonder won another Grammy – yay! That’s number 25 for him, I think.
  • Paul McCartney came away empty-handed again, and I can’t say that I’m totally surprised. While Chaos And Creation In The Backyard is his best album in the past 18 years, he wasn’t very “buzzworthy,” and that tends to sway NARAS members. But Paul’s performances were great. I’ve yet to watch his takes on “Fine Line” and “Helter Skelter” (though I hear the latter was kick-ass), but his dropping in on Jay-Z and Linkin Park was totally cool – a sly nod-and-wink to The Grey Album, and just plain fun to see. So what if Paul’s voice was a little rough and the vocal mix very off – he stood up and sang, dammit!
  • Seeing Sly Stone was weird. Although it was uplifting to see him on stage again, it was somewhat tragic to see how fragile he now is. And that blonde mohawk! And the silver jacket! At least he showed up, got on stage, sang a little, played the keys a little, and left when he felt he’d done his part. (And it was most fitting to have Dave Chappelle do the intro for Sly’s segment.)
  • I don’t feel sorry for Mariah Carey. She won three awards where she was clearly the class of the crowd, and lost to worthy opponents in the other five categories in which she was nominated. Even winning one Grammy would be enough to say her comeback is a success.
  • Strange thing: Neil Young’s Prairie Wind being nominated for “Best Rock Album,” when it better suited the “Contemporary Folk” category.
  • Another strange thing: Bruce Springsteen winning “Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance” for “Devils & Dust,” which is much more folk than rock. Of course, his competition in the category was fairly weak, so his was probably the most “rock & roll” voice of the bunch.
  • Congrats to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for winning “Best Spoken Word” Grammy for Dreams From My Father. Now he joins the ranks of the Clintons – nowhere to go but up!