5 things to watch for on Grammy night
The Grammys have all kinds of issues, every single year, but at least they don’t have a host controversy.
The 61st annual awards show enters Sunday with a safe choice in Alicia Keys, who has 15 of those little trophies at home. She will preside over the performance-filled event at the Staples Center in Los Angeles airing at 8 p.m. Viewers can watch it on CBS or stream it live with a CBS All Access subscription (there’s a free one-week trial) or via YouTube TV and Hulu.
This year, the party is a little bigger, as the Grammys have expanded the number of nominees, and Pittsburghers will have more to watch for than ever before, although much of that will happen in the Premiere Ceremony, which begins at 3:30 p.m. at grammy.com.
Here are a few things to watch for:
Will Mac Miller win his first Grammy?
Although adored by fans and hip-hop blogs, Mac Miller spent most of his tragically short career without much love from mainstream critics and the people who hand out awards. He received his first Grammy nomination two months after he died — angering some of his fans — for “Swimming,” the selfreflective album he released in August. According to TMZ, the rapper will be represented there by his parents, but will they make it to the podium? It will depend on how strongly voters feel about Cardi B, whose debut album, “Invasion of Privacy,” is also nominated for album of the year, and Travis Scott, whose blockbuster “Astroworld” had the second-largest opening week of the year, after Drake’s “Scorpion.”
Will the soundtrack rage back?
The last movie song to win song or record of the year? It was Celine Dion in full-on “Titanic” mode on “My Heart Will Go On,” deemed by Maxim to be “the second most tragic event ever to result from that fabled ocean liner.” It was part of sweeping run of Grammy-winning soundtrack songs in the ’90s that included Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” from “Rush” (1993), Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” from “The Bodyguard” (1994), Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” from “Batman Forever” (1996) and Clapton’s “Change the World” from “Phenomenon” (1997). This year, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper bring the soundtrack song back with “Shallow,” their stirring power ballad from a remake of “A Star Is Born.” Believe it or not, this would be Gaga’s first win in a major category, but “Shallow” will have to top another soundtrack song, Kendrick Lamar/SZA’s “All the Stars,” from “Black Panther,” and Childish Gambino’s provocative, one-off single “This Is America,” which grabbed everyone’s attention when it dropped suddenly in May.
Who will shine on stage?
It’s been a while since we’ve seen the great Diana Ross on stage or screen, so that will be an anticipated moment on Grammy night as she celebrates her 75th birthday and teases her new Las Vegas residency. Of course, most people will be watching out for the young blood, including five of the album of the year nominees — H.E.R., Brandi Carlile, Kacey Musgraves, Janelle Monae and Cardi B — plus the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Miley Cyrus, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes, Dan + Shay and more.
How will the rest of Pittsburgh represent?
Miller isn’t the only local with a Grammy nod. Christina Aguilera, who was born in New York and grew up in Wexford before breaking big in 1999, is up for best rap/sung performance for “Like I Do” (with Goldlink), but it’s against three record of the year nominees: “This Is America,” “All the Stars” and Post Malone featuring 21 Savage’s “Rockstar.” In the best pop duo/group performance, she encounters “Shallow” with the Demi Lovato duet “Fall in Line.”
Dan + Shay, a hot Nashville pop-country act that features Pittsburgh native Dan Smyers, received two nominations, best country duo/group performance and best country song, for “Tequila,” the hit from its third, self-titled album.
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra are up for best orchestral performance and best engineered album, classical, for “Beethoven: Symphony No. 3; Strauss: Horn Concerto No. 1.” They swept those categories last year with Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5.”
Renee Fleming, from Indiana, Pa., is nominated, impressively, in two genres: best theater album (“Carousel”) and best opera recording (“Der Rosenkavalier”).
Composer Stephen Flaherty of Dormont, with songwriting partner Lynn Ahrens already a two-time Grammy nominee (“Ragtime,” “Seussical”), was nominated this time in the best theater album category, for the Tony-winning revival of “Once on This Island.”
Who will get the angriest?
Grammy anger has been all the rage in recent years, sometimes for good reason. Two years ago, the expected Kendrick Lamar album of the year award went to Bruno Mars, and the year before that Beyonce’s AOY for “Lemonade” went to Adele. This year shapes up as a less loaded situation in a more diverse, expanded field and there are no clear favorites. Taking a cue from the Oscars, the Grammys bumped the nominees in the general categories from five to eight to be more inclusive and draw more viewers. Last year, there was only one female artist in the album-of-the-year category and the year before that there was only one rap artist. This year, there are female artists (Cardi B, Brandi Carlile, H.E.R., Janelle Monae and Kacey Musgraves) and four rappers (Cardi B, Drake, Post Malone, Kendrick Lamar for the “Black Panther” soundtrack), so those bases are covered. It’s the rock artists left out of the loop, but, collectively, they don’t make up the best advocacy group and, frankly, they don’t care all that much.