Anna Baynham
Staff Writer
Adele owned the 2012 Grammy Awards, winning all six categories she was nominated for.
The show began in a somewhat somber mood with a Bruce Springsteen performance and a memorial prayer for recently deceased singing icon and Grammy Award winner, Whitney Houston.
Hosted by LL Cool J, with MC Lyte and Dave Coz co-hosting, Kanye West received the most nominiations, with seven. Adele, Bruno Mars, and Foo Fighters received six. Lil Wayne and RadioHead both earned five nominations. A total of 78 awards were presented.
Bruno Mars performance after the Houston prayer killed the stage. He is really beginning to remind me of a modern day Elvis Presley. Performing, Runaway Baby, Bruno was one of my favorite acts the whole night. Alicia Keys and and Bonnie Rait performed “A Sunday Kind of Love”, a tribute to the late great Etta James.
In my opinion, Adele deserved every award she received. She tied Beyoncé’s record for most wins by a female artist in one night. Foo Fighters and West followed with five and four awards, respectively. Surprisingly no one pulled a Kanye and came on the stage to express their views about the wins of the nominees. Paul McCartney received the award for MusiCares Person of the Year.
With performances from Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and several others, the Grammys really showed the diversity of today’s music selections.
After Rihanna’s performance, I no longer wanted to watch the Grammys. Well that was until the Nicki Minaj performance and the tribute to Houston by Jennifer Hudson that I just knew would be amazing.
Rochelle Murray, a sophomore biology major from Forest, Miss, said, “I think it could have been a little more time on the Whitney Houston tribute. Eventhough it was last minute it could’ve been done.”
Unfortunately, I got my hopes up. Taking into consideration that they had less than 24 hours to slide the tribute into the show, I do not think that Jennifer Hudson’s performance did her justice. I know when the BET Awards show airs that Houston will get the wonderful tribute that she deserves.
I was also looking forward to Lil Wayne and Minaj’s performance. However, both were very weird and confusing. Of course these two performances had the social media networks working overtime discussing how they strongly disliked the both of them. I was disturbed but I wasn’t too surprised. It’s Wayne and Nicki. None of their performances have ever been normal.
Because this was the first Grammy show that I have watched, I wasn’t too disappointed. I feel like a lot of people don’t like the Grammys because they are accustomed to watching all black awards shows. The Grammy’0s obviously isn’t one of them. Overall it was a good show. I hope to see more African American artists nominated next year though.
