Grammy Whammy’s

Marketing, marketing, marketing. Branding, branding, branding. The key words for the last decade held court last evening in LA where the Grammy Awards brought another parade of fashion challenges for what a large part of the event entails. And brand, market, star it, wear it, share it, was and is always the point with Lady Gag-Gag who preened in all of her magnificence at the awards….. Wait! In truth, no. She didn’t preen nor did she brand herself beyond “boring” when she floated a huge Plexiglas egg over the red carpet, on to the stage, then emerged from it without organic cracking fanfare of birth or mirth into the audience’s air space – way too early before breakfast for all to enjoy whatever it was Gaggy wanted to serve up with a not-so-golden egg. 

We wuz robbed, I tell you! Robbed! Lady Gaggy-Gag lost her luster for shocking, and Eminem was quasi-ignored – again.


Yes, he did catch a few statues. But hey, Eminem was given the Best Rap Album of the Year rather than the Big One. Recovery was far more than a Rap performance. What a rip. Who won in that category? You know, the exhaulted Album of the Year? I’m not sure who they are other than Canadian and why they won anything. I know their name - Arcade Fire – and am watching them now while they close the show with a standard rock-out cacophony most bands can pull off - further convincing me that half of the academy is stoned-deaf. I could be in a minority on my entire take of the event, but somewhere along the night, I simply glazed over, although ”Need You Now” is a very good tune and Lady Antebellum deserved most of their five wins. It’s a straight-forward catchy little thing that almost wants to tug at your jaded heart no matter how far you’d like to run away from music with a twang.

But once again Eminem was overlooked in 3 top categories: Record, Song, and Album of the Year. Whine. Wince. Hiss.

The evening began on a high note with an amazing musical tribute to Aretha Franklin where Christina A redeemed herself - a tiny bit if you ignore that she fell down and went boom - from the Super Foil episode, and Jennifer Hudson and others joined in to give the Queen of Soul her definite due. Ah hah! I thought. This is going to be a good show. How cool. And it was…for approximately 35 minutes before it all began to look and sound the same.

Lady Gag-Gag seemed to be worth waiting for if for nothing other than how she’d dress and what her number would be like considering how she tends to steal a show…..

Oh dear. Poor baby. She had so much to live up to following last year’s ash-covered-glittery spin in Elton John’s bomb-shelter, a meat dress at the MTV Awards last September, as well as how she dresses just to get to her next gig on a plane…. How could she surpass herself this time? I can certainly attest to how it wasn’t by heating-up within the claustrophobic egg unless she had been ‘over easy.’ Had Justin Bieber dressed as bacon and Usher as hash-fries, I still doubt the entire charade could have been satisfying - even with a double latte.