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While many on the Christian right were left clutching their pearls following Sam Smith and Kim Petras‘ supposedly “satanic” performance at the 2023 Grammys, one organization closely familiar with the subject matter found it a bit boring.
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In an interview with TMZ, David Harris, a magister of the Church of Satan, said he thought Smith and Petras’ performance was “all right” and “nothing particularly special.” In the performance, Smith sported a red leather outfit with horns sprouting from a top hat, while Petras danced in a cage surrounded by fire and backup dancers dressed as devils.
However, when it came to the real-life people who were offended by the performance — especially public officials like Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene — Harris called them “delicate snowflakes,” while also turning their own criticism back on them. “It’s sad when politicians on a national stage use someone’s religion as a punchline,” he said.
Harris’ comments came after a wave of criticism for both Smith and Petras online following their performance. Cruz called the number “evil,” while Greene said the production was “demonic.”
Petras spoke a bit more about the performance after making history as the first transgender woman to win in the best pop duo/group performance category, arguing that those getting upset about it were also the ones who directly inspired it. “It’s a take on not being able to choose religion, and not being able to live the way that people might want you to live,” she said. “I think a lot of people have labeled what I stand for and what Sam stands for as ‘religiously not cool.’ I personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it, but then slowly realizing it doesn’t want me to be a part of it.”
Check out Petras’ acceptance speech for the award below:
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Source: Kevin Mazur / Getty
Even though her star is rising GloRilla is still living in the moment. She recently met Beyoncé and it was a fangirl moment of the ages.
As spotted on Madame Noire the Memphis, Tennessee native attended the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. Throughout the evening she was seen meeting and greeting her peers and idols for the first time. In a chance occasion she met Queen B and it was clear any of her ego was immediately dropped. The two quickly hugged and Glo told her “I love you so much.” She videotaped the brief interaction with her phone and posted the clip to her social media channels. “I met Beyoncé bye !!!!!!! My life is COMPLETE” her caption read.
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Obviously meeting the legendary songstress was a big deal to her. She later went on Facebook to further express her excitement regarding the chance meeting. “I’m finna get my 15 second conversation with Beyoncé tatted !!!!!!ahhhhhhh I’m still not over it” she wrote. She also changed her profile picture to a photo of the two ladies.
Gushing over Beyoncé should not be a surprise to Glo’s core fanbase. In the past she has made it clear the Destiny’s Child member would be a dream collaboration for her. “There’s a lot of people I want to do songs with that I’m a fan of,” she said in an interview with Grammy.com. “But my top two that I’m extremely obsessed with is Beyoncé and Chief Keef. I want to work with Drake and Lil Wayne, too.”
You can view the meet up below.
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If the all-star salute to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop on the 65th annual Grammy Awards left you wanting more, the Grammys have more on the way. A two-hour, Grammy-branded special will tape on Aug. 11, which is the 50th anniversary (to the day!) of a back-to-school party in The Bronx that many point to as the beginning of hip-hop culture. CBS will broadcast the special later this year.
Questlove, who curated the 15-minute spot on Sunday’s Grammy telecast, will have a role in the special, though his exact title is to be determined. Jesse Collins, an executive producer of the Grammy telecast, will produce the special.
While many will assume that the success of the spot on the Grammy telecast led CBS to hurry a special into production, the special was in the works before anyone knew there would be a segment on the telecast, according to a source.
Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, hinted at the upcoming special in a statement announcing the telecast segment. “For five decades, Hip Hop has not only been a defining force in music, but a major influence on our culture,” he said. “Its contributions to art, fashion, sport, politics, and society cannot be overstated. I’m so proud that we are honoring it in such a spectacular way on the Grammy stage. It is just the beginning of our year-long celebration of this essential genre of music.” Questlove has mentioned the upcoming special in his post-Grammy tweets. Talking about why certain artists were booked for the hip-hop tribute and others weren’t, he tweeted:
or we made a decision to wait for the 2 hour August taping— Dr. Love (@questlove) February 6, 2023
The hip-hop segment on the Grammy telecast, which featured three dozen rap acts, drew universal praise. Billboard’s Joe Lynch pegged it as the best performance on the telecast. “While it’s an impossible task to sum up 50 years of any genre (much less one that fought for decades to get a modicum of mainstream respect and eventually became the dominant genre in American music), this electrifying medley brought to vivid life the charged personalities, thumping grooves, deft deliveries and unpredictable flourishes that make hip-hop a global force.”
The segment was produced by Questlove, Collins, Patrick Menton of Fulwell 73, creative producer Fatima Robinson and Shawn Gee, Questlove’s manager and president of LNU. The segment is part of Paramount Global’s companywide initiative to honor the 50th anniversary of hip-hop.
The Grammys have not always been hip-hop supporters. The Grammys didn’t have a dedicated category for rap or hip-hop until the 1988 awards, which were presented on Feb. 22, 1989. D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s genial pop hit “Parents Just Don’t Understand” was the first hip-hop recording to win a Grammy (best rap performance). But they weren’t invited to perform on the show that year.
A year later, on Feb. 21, 1990, the duo became the first hip-hop act to perform on the Grammys. “We’d like to dedicate this performance to all the rappers last year that stood with us and helped us to earn the right to be on this stage tonight,” Will Smith said before he and D.J. Jazzy Jeff launched into “I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson.”
Both Questlove and Collins are coming off major honors for their work. Questlove won both an Oscar (his first) and a Grammy (his sixth) in 2022 for directing the documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Collins won his first Primetime Emmy in 2022 as an executive producer of The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, which was voted outstanding variety special (live).
CBS, which has broadcast the Grammy telecast since 1973, will air a second Grammy-branded special this year – A Grammy Salute to The Beach Boys. The special, the latest in a series of “Grammy Salute” specials, will be taped on Wednesday, Feb. 8 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
The Beach Boys and hip-hop are in very different musical worlds, of course, but it’s worth noting that the Beach Boys had a sizable hit in 1987 (No. 12 hit on the Hot 100) with a collab with the Brooklyn rap trio Fat Boys. The two groups teamed for a remake of The Surfaris’ 1963 classic “Wipeout.”
The fact that a quintessential American vocal group teamed with a rap group 36 years ago is more evidence, as if any more were needed, of hip-hop’s reach and endurance.
Beyoncé made history at the 2023 Grammy Awards on Sunday, becoming the first person ever to win 32 of the Recording Academy’s shiny gramophones. But just one of those 32 awards has come in a Big Four category (album, record and song of the year plus best new artist). It happened on the 2010 telecast, when Bey won song of the year for co-writing her dance smash “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”
Beyoncé has been nominated in Big Four categories 18 times. That means she’s had to politely smile as someone else walked up to accept a Big Four award that she was nominated for 17 times. In 2017, she famously lost the three top awards to Adele. In 2001, she and her Destiny’s Child colleagues lost two of the top three awards to U2. In 2021, two of her singles lost to a Billie Eilish hit.
It’s hard to feel too sorry for an artist who has won more Grammys than Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Prince and Elton John combined. And yet, the fact that Beyoncé has a 1-17 track record in the Big Four categories – which are by far the most closely watched and prestigious – is galling to the Beyhive, and to many others who believe it shows that Beyoncé (and Black artists in general) are undervalued by the Academy.
That said, she has twice lost to other Black artists in Big Four categories. Two years ago, “Black Parade” lost song of the year to H.E.R.’s BLM anthem “I Can’t Breathe.” This year, “Break My Soul” lost record of the year to Lizzo’s jubilant “About Damn Time.”
Here’s a closer look at every time Beyoncé was nominated in a Big Four category. The dates shown are the dates of that year’s Grammy telecast.
It’s officially a wrap on all the festivities surrounding music’s biggest night.
The 65th annual Grammy Awards took place on Sunday night from Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, and the ceremony itself — chock-full of showstopping performances, including Bad Bunny’s shimmy-worthy mambo and merengue fusion of “El Apagon” and “Después de la Playa,” a hits-filled medley with the biggest names in hip-hop over the past 50 years, and a team-up between Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and Chris Stapleton to pay tribute to Motown — concluded with several surprises before its famous attendees jetted off to star-studded afterparties.
Samara Joy won best new artist and best jazz vocal album for her 2022 sophomore effort Linger Awhile. Naturally, the New York City native was all smiles when it came time to party, showing up at the Universal Music Group afterparty looking like the winner she is and posing for photos alongside the record label’s CEO Lucian Grange.
Kim Petras — who won the award for best pop duo/group performance for her and Sam Smith’s “Unholy” and became the first transgender winner in the category in one fell swoop — was also in attendance at the Universal Music Group afterparty, where she posed alongside EVP Michele Anthony for a snap.
Album of the year winner Harry Styles also made an appearance at the afterparties, posing with country artist Orville Peck and several label executives at Sony Music Entertainment’s post-Grammys reception after a big night at the ceremony, which also included wins in the best pop vocal album for Harry’s House and a dazzling performance of “As It Was.”
See more artists, including friendship duos SZA & H.E.R. and Olivia Rodrigo & Conan Gray, in Billboard‘s Grammy afterparties gallery below.
Even with streaming services dominating music consumption, there ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby, and physical music – from vinyl to expansive box sets – is experiencing a resurgence that’s proving to be a boon for tactile superfans.
10 Best Box Sets of 2022
12/16/2022
Blondie fans were gifted with one of the best box sets in recent memory this year with Against the Odds: 1974-1982, which tracks the band’s unlikely evolution from scrappy CBGB mainstays to chart-topping pop powerhouses. One of the premier bands who funneled the energy and ethos of punk into punchy pop songs in the vein of Brill Building hits, Blondie was also the most successful act to emerge from the NYC punk scene, topping the Billboard Hot 100 four times from 1979-81.
Beyond rounding up the remastered albums from the band’s first era, Against the Odds boasts illuminating lo-fi demos from 1974-75 – including a Shangri-Las cover and irresistibly cheeky rarities such as “Puerto Rico” — as well as selections from an album they might have made with disco super-producer Giorgio Moroder in a different timeline. And the liner notes – oftentimes an exercise in rose-tinted adoration or an afterthought in some box sets – are perfectly executed by Erin Osmon, providing thoughtful context and wry anecdotes.
It’s no surprise that Against the Odds is up for best historical album at the 2023 Grammy Awards, for which voting recently began. But it might be a surprise that the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers (who could also make the Songwriters Hall of Fame next year) have yet to win a Grammy despite their undeniable impact on generations of musicians from numerous genres.
Riding high on the tide of Against the Odds, co-founders Debbie Harry and Chris Stein hopped on a Zoom with Billboard to discuss everything from TikTok to a “garage” of unreleased tapes they’re sitting on to almost working with Phil Spector back in the day.
So what was the impetus behind pulling together this massive box set. Was the label looking for something or did you guys feel like you needed to get this out?
Chris Stein: The label is not like it used to be. It’s not the serfdom it used to be where we were the serfs. It mostly came from having all the tapes, just a garage full of tapes that followed me around.
Debbie Harry: I think what happened was that Chris started to have everything digitized –
Chris: We were working at this studio called The Magic Shop downtown [Manhattan], where Bowie did Blackstar, all this amazing music came out of there. We were the last band in there as they closed — they got pushed out by rent. And the owner, Steve Rosenthal, has a digitizing company [MARS]. So we started talking, Tommy [Camuso] and me, about doing all the tapes that I have. I have a literal garage full of tapes and he has all that stuff and we’re going over it gradually.
Debbie: You mean there’s more! [laughs] Oh no.
So even now we’re just scratching the surface. What kind of material is left? Are we talking unreleased songs?
Chris: Probably, yeah? There’s more stuff. I was pleased that people gravitated toward the weird-ass demos and all these little odds and ends [on the box set]. It’s stuff that’s been in the back of our [gestures to head] whatever for years.
The first song on the first disc, which actually appears in two different versions on this set, is a cover of the Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets.” But in the liner notes, Chris, you said you initially weren’t all that into the girl group sound.
Chris: When I was a little kid I thought it was like Justin Bieber, I thought it was too commercial and I didn’t pay attention to it. Then I started the band situation and realized how brilliant all that stuff was. Now, I find it really weird that this whole generation of kids on TikTok is drawn to the one little phrase in “Walking In the Sand,” one of the Shangri-Las’ songs: “oh no, oh no, oh no no.” Most of the kids don’t even know what the f–k it is I’m sure. It’s a strange phenomenon to me.
You can certainly hear the influence of girl group on the early Blondie records. And aside from the New York Dolls, there weren’t a lot of other punk bands making explicit girl group references back then.
Debbie: The reason I got to sing on the Ramones record [“Go Lil’ Camaro Go”] was because of that. They told me they really liked that about my voice and we did do some kind of acknowledgment to those songs, and that’s why they put me on.
Chris: Debbie is the only female on a Ramones record.
What was that session like?
Debbie: Pretty straight ahead. It’s not really a complicated melody musically and it’s a song about a car. (laughs)
One thing this box set makes evident that people might not realize is how early “Heart of Glass” [released in 1979] was percolating in the band’s story, titled “Once I Had a Love” as far back as 1975 and then “The Disco Song” at one point. What made it take so long to get right?
Chris: It happens. Some of these songs I have on this new record we just finished are 10 years old. It just happens. Everybody – writers, directors – have germs that stay with them for long periods.
Did you ever think of just giving up on it?
Chris: We were always doing so much stuff simultaneously, and it was just always there.
Debbie: We were doing pre-production with Mike Chapman [on Parallel Lines] and we played him a bunch of songs, ran through everything, and Mike said, “Yeah, yeah, do you have anything else?” And that was it.
Courtesy Photo
In the liner notes, you describe how Chapman’s approach to Parallel Lines was a bit more intense than what you were used to on previous albums Blondie and Plastic Letters. You’re still making music, so what do you prefer to do these days – get it done quick, or obsess over take after take?
Chris: We work with John Congleton and he’s more immediate, but everyone’s skill set is different. We work with different musicians now and some of these guys are masters, more so than we were back then for sure. There’s a lot of variables. I don’t know if Chapman was quite at a Stanley Kubrick level with the takes but it felt like that occasionally.
Debbie: I think [Richard] Gottehrer [producer on Blondie and Plastic Letters] always recorded us much the way they record jazz bands — he went for that moment, that feeling, that interaction. And Chapman was the tone Meister. He was used to making things for radio and the pop format. He’d done all those bands in Europe and the U.K. and that was his method.
Chris: The first two records where much more live. The whole band would play and we’d do a couple overdubs. Parallel Lines was certainly pieced together, which I really enjoy: I like the layering process. It’s more precise and a different approach entirely. It was educational. Chapman had such a great bedside manner. He made it easier working really hard. He’s a funny, crazy guy. He’s a character in addition to having this ear and ability.
Giorgio Moroder, another producer you worked with [“Call Me”], certainly had an ear for radio. In the liner notes, Moroder said he was supposed to do an album with you guys but left because of the band’s in-fighting. Is that how you remember it?
Chris: Yeah, Giorgio just didn’t want to put up with our crazy bullsh-t.
Debbie: I think Giorgio was a much different – he was primarily a songwriter-producer, and he just cut to the chase. He didn’t want to deal with the subtleties or inner workings of a band. He made great stuff.
Do you have any regrets that album didn’t happen?
Debbie: No.
Chris: Yes, no, I don’t know. There’s lots of stuff. Phil Spector really wanted to do a record with us and I’m really glad we didn’t get into that. I heard all those insane stories about the Ramones and him.
You might have literally dodged a bullet.
Debbie: I don’t know, I sort of feel badly about what happened to him. There’s been a show on recently, a documentary [Spector on Showtime].
Chris: He shot that girl, no doubt.
Debbie: Yeah, I know. The people that worked with him said he reached a certain point and he lost it. He went to a bad place in his brain. And that’s a shame because he did some genius things and should be remembered for that.
Chris: There seems to be somebody else, a certain person in rap music, who’s having a public meltdown right now and should not have a lot of fan boys surrounding him and telling him how great he is all the time.
The box set also includes this crazy Christmas version of “Rapture” called “Yule Town Throw Down.” So… why is there a Christmas version of “Rapture”?
Chris: When we did the recording, we did it slower and decided it was too slow. I got the 2-inch tapes of the slower version and brought it into my studio and put myself, [Fab 5] Freddy and Debbie on it. It was for a British magazine called Flexipop! that had a little plastic disc with each issue and that was the Christmas issue. So that was floating around for a long time.
There’s also an alternate, slightly experimental version of “The Tide Is High” with Walter Steding on this set that’s beautiful.
Chris: He’s a really eccentric musician. There’s a violin on the original, the Paragons’ original, which is really interesting to me. I can’t think of another reggae song with a violin, period. And all the horn lines on our final version are based on that violin line. So it was referential.
“Union City Blue” is one of my favorite Blondie songs, but it wasn’t a hit. Do you have any favorite Blondie songs that you wish had been bigger?
Debbie: Well, this morning I woke up singing “Nothing Is Real But the Girl” [from No Exit] and I don’t know why. It’s funny how different songs come into my mind for no apparent reason. Some of those darker, less famous tracks are really great. I would love to be playing them live. It’s frustrating. We could do a three-hour show, and I’d probably die, but I’d love to play a lot of those songs. I’d love to do a thing where we’d stay at a club for a week and do a lot of material. That would be fun. There’s a lot of stuff.
Chris: Maybe we could get Bruce to come up instead of you. All his shows are like five hours, right?
He is the marathon man. You should do a residency! People would love that.
Debbie: We’ll see. Maybe it’ll happen.
The Hunter was the last Blondie album of that first era. It didn’t connect with fans in the same way your previous albums had. Did you care at the time?
Chris: I was mostly disappointed in the cover. [Smiling] The cover is bad. There’s some great stuff on there. It was a lower period for us personally. Things were in decline and it reflects that. If it had a better cover maybe people would see it as a breakup album or some bullsh-t.
Debbie: I don’t even remember what’s on there except for “The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game.”
Chris: “English Boys” is a good song. “Island of Lost Souls” was released in the U.K. as a single as the same time the f–king Falklands [an undeclared war between the U.K. and Argentina] were going on, and they all decided it was about that, even though it had nothing to do with that.
Debbie: We did okay with “War Child,” it was good for a show.
There’s a lot of great covers on this box set, too: The Doors, Johnny Cash. How did you decide what artists to cover?
Chris: Just what we liked. We covered so much stuff. We were always talking about doing a Pin Ups record of covers [like Bowie’s 1973 album]. We always did Stones songs over the years, we did that Beatles song, “Please Please Me.” We played that many times over the last 10 years.
Debbie: Especially when we get to Liverpool.
Chris: I always tell younger bands to do covers so if people aren’t familiar with your material, it’s an automatic connection.
Blondie songs are certainly still a part of the collective cultural consciousness.
Chris: Everything is about soundtracking now. We’re lucky we have songs that represent the period. I can’t believe we got a song [“The Tide Is High”] in Better Call Saul. Having a song in the Breaking Bad universe was f–king amazing.
Debbie: He can die now. (laughs)
Chris: And the thing in The Boys. [Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy] doing the rap [from “Rapture”] was great.
Debbie: Oh God, that was great.
So you pay attention when your songs crop up?
Chris: I do a lot of TV watching. More than listening to music. I get so much new music in front of me from looking at TikTok and Instagram Reels. And I have teenage daughters, too. There’s so much great modern stuff, it’s limitless.
Do you enjoy TikTok?
Chris: I wind up on Instagram more. What I hate about TikTok is that everybody makes a video and then they lure you in with “now look for part 2” and it’s impossible to find. There’s a lot of really great stuff on there. But also tons of garbage.
Certainly true of any medium. Against the Odds is up for best historical album at the 2023 Grammys. What would it mean to see that album win a Grammy?
Chris: It would be nice to get the thing. We got a Clio, an advertising award. It’s not even in EGOT.
You could say it’s in the CEGOT. After the box set was completed, what did it feel like seeing the band’s first period all laid out?
Debbie: I mean, great. A lot of good times. A lot of satisfaction. When you come up with something good it makes you feel great. The shows are really fun. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without it. I guess that’s a good sign.
Chris: Being any kind of an artist, it becomes such a large part of your make-up. I encourage everybody to become more creative.
Debbie, before this, you released a well-received memoir, Face It, in 2019. So you’ve done a good deal of looking back recently.
Debbie: Now, I’m reading a book [Don’t Call Me Home] by Alexa Auder, Viva’s daughter, and I love the way she deals with these deep emotional things. It almost makes me think I should have gone deeper. But Chris’ book is coming out — it will be really historical and great and full of insight. I’m looking forward to it, I’ve only read 50 pages. How far have you gotten?
Chris: It’s like 100,000 words at this point. I keep tweaking it. There’s so much stuff it’s nuts. I have this Zelig-like relationship to the music culture where I was in so many places at the right moment, including New York in the ‘70s and San Francisco in ’67, ’68, all of that stuff. It goes on and on.
When asked to describe how he felt hosting the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in March 2021, Trevor Noah has trouble choosing just one word — but he lands on “intrigued.”
It was his first time hosting, and a year of other big firsts, too: Ben Winston’s first year executive-producing the broadcast and the first time in the Grammys’ six-decade history that a pandemic had upended the show. At the Los Angeles Convention Center, guests of honor were masked and seated at socially distanced tables of two. Shrubbery and patio lights added warmth to the usually sterile space, as the limited in-person audience — almost exclusively nominees — offered much-quieter-than-usual applause for the global superstars who took home awards, like Megan Thee Stallion, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
Yet the night’s limitations also yielded other exciting firsts, like watching Harry Styles cheer and whistle for Eilish during her performance of “Everything I Wanted” and seeing Bad Bunny gyrate along to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating.” “Nobody knew what was happening, and yet everybody was trying to create a semblance of normalcy,” Noah recalls. “It felt cavernous. There’s no crowd. You would think it would be awkward — but it became less awkward. It became intimate.”
This year will be Noah’s third consecutive time hosting, and he says that experience, too, has made the monumental awards show feel closer to normal — so much so that he has updated his one-word descriptor of the gig from “intrigued” to “celebratory.”
Read the full cover story for Billboard’s Grammy Voter Guide here.