1 Sam Smith is the new Adele
With Adele herself off the scene, the field was clear for another Brit to steam in and sell soul music back to America. Enter Sam Smith, who even seemed to be nicking her acceptance speech – when he scooped the record of the year prize for his unrequited love-themed Stay With Me he thanked “the man who broke my heart, because now I’ve got four Grammys”. Then again, since it was his fourth acceptance speech of the night, inspiration was probably running low.
2 Madonna is still showing her bum
With a new album to push, there was no way that understatement was going to be Madonna’s watchword for the evening, but her red carpet attire along drew gasps. Half matador, half courtesan, with a lace veil, over-the-knee boots and boobs basically out, her Givenchy creation was gobsmacking … and then she got her bum out. After all that, stakes were high for her minotaur-assisted performance of Living for Love, but Madonna pulled it off.
3 Kanye West has mellowed
On a fairly predictable night, the nearest we got to an upset was when Beck won album of the year for Morning Phase, beating Beyoncé’s self-titled “visual album”. Kanye West rushed the stage when after Beck had scaled the podium – to Jay Z’s visible horror – but unlike his gatecrashing of Taylor Swift all those years ago, this time he let Beck give his speech. It was quite a Kanye-heavy night – he showed as much cleavage as Rihanna when the pair performed FourFiveSeconds with Paul McCartney, and played Only One lit by a single spotlight, dressed in a raspberry velour tracksuit.
4 Prince steals the show just by turning up
Having thrilled the room at the Golden Globes, Prince turned up clad in head-to-toe tangerine to give out the best album gong. “Like books and black lives, albums still matter,” noted the legendary funketeer, in one of several subtle but pointed statements about race scattered throughout the evening. Another was Pharrell’s performance of Happy, which amidst an extravagant staging which nodded to The Grand Budapest Hotel and boasted concert piano by Lang Lang, contained a moment of choreography which nodded to the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture from the Ferguson protests.
Prince's face is my everything. pic.twitter.com/eAc8VmQ3iJ
— E. Alex Jung (@e_alexjung) February 9, 2015
5 The Grammys are trying to tackle domestic violence
Six years after Rihanna was beaten up by Chris Brown on the eve of the Grammys, President Obama make a speech on video as part of the It’s On Us campaign against rape and domestic violence. Activist and domestic violence survivor Brooke Axtell made a short speech including the words: “Authentic love does not devalue a human being. Authentic love does not silence, or shame or abuse. Your voice will save you ... Let it set you free to know who you really are.” Brown was in the audience this year, as he was nominated for an award.
6 Annie Lennox can still chew up the scenery
Though the Grammys was at its most torpid when it hit a seam of slow numbers, Annie Lennox managed to turn up the heat during her duet on Hozier’s Take Me to Church. Appearing in a sparkly black jacket and fixing the audience with a gimlet-eyed stare, she seized control and turned it into an impressively intense cover of Screaming Jay Hawkins’s I Put a Spell on You. “That would have had him rolling in his grave,” said an admirer on Twitter. “Not because it was bad, but because he did that anyway.”
7 Taylor Swift is everyone’s best friend
First she was friends with Lorde, then she was friends with Ed Sheeran, and now she’s chumming up to Sam Smith, although given that he took home four awards to her zero (OK, 1989 came out too late to be eligible) she could be reconsidering those warm feelings. Her joking, humblebragging mention that she failed to win best new artist in 2008 was also quite cute, until we remembered who did win that year – Amy Winehouse.
8 Sia and Kristen Wiig is a marriage made in heaven
While the Australian pop powerhouse failed to pick up any awards, her performance with the star of Bridesmaids and 12-year-old mini-me dancer Maddie Ziegler was one of the best of the night. Sia performed facing the wall, allowing Wiig and Ziegler to provide the visual stimulation with an electifying and hilarious dance performance.
9 Jessie J either has the world’s best agent, or photographs of the upper echelons of the US music scene in compromising positions
How else can you account for that fact that she was able to perform – and duetting with her Tom Jones at that? The pair proceeded to massacre the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, though John Legend politely pretended (one can only assume) to like it.
10 Beyoncé still rules the Grammys in 2015
She might not have been one of the night’s big winners, but there was only one person who was going to be entrusted with the night’s climactic moment. She sang Take My Hand Precious Lord with such emotion that she seemed to be making herself cry – although the spiritual elements were slightly undermined by the fact that she appeared to be wearing a cross between a nun’s habit and a negligee.
