The 56th annual Grammy Awards have come and gone, and Daft Punk, Lorde, Vampire Weekend and Dave Grohl are among those likely to look back fondly on last night's ceremony. All of the aforementioned artists left the Staples Center in Los Angeles with gramophone trophies, proving "music's biggest night" sometimes gets it right.
Everyone bags on the Grammys, that annual snooze-fest in which the record industry pretends its still relevant and honors a bunch of terrible artists for making horrible music only housewives and tween girls actually care about, but every now and then, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gets it right.
It’s been almost five years since remaining Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have performed together, but they will reunite at this year’s Grammy Awards. In addition to playing together, the duo will be honored with the Beatles’ Lifetime Achievement Award.
For as long as they've existed, the Grammys have been called safe, predictable and out of touch, and the list of amazing artists that haven't won a single award certainly lends credence to such arguments. True, the Grammys sometimes get it right, but for every win by a worthy band -- Nirvana taking Best Alternative Album for 'MTV Unplugged in New York,' say -- there are dozens of inexcusable sligh
If nothing else, New Order deserve a Grammy for resilience. As everyone (except maybe your average Grammy voter) knows, the band rose from the ashes of U.K. post-punkers Joy Division, whose singer, Ian Curtis, committed suicide in 1980. It took JD's surviving three a couple of albums to find their voice, but find it they did, fashioning a dance-rock sound well ahead of its time.
Sure, Patti Smith's music is an acquired taste -- she's a spunky punk poet, not a golden-voiced chanteuse -- but it's one a lot of people have acquired. She's beloved by peers and critics alike, and she's even a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Iceland's most famous export, musical or otherwise, made her name with the Sugarcubes in the '80s and emerged the following decade as an unlikely MTV darling, exposing Middle American teens to some of the weirdest pop ever to go mainstream.