Not all performances are wins: Best to worst
The Grammy Awards are music’s biggest night. But which performers deserved to be there? Certainly Kendrick Lamar, Patti Lupone, Cardi B and Rihanna, who served up some of the most thrilling performances of Sunday night’s broadcast, with Kesha, Lady Gaga and Maren Morris delivering moments of emotional catharsis. But just because some legendary artists were booked didn’t mean they delivered memorable performances. From Lamar’s elaborate stagings to U2’s bust on a barge, we rank every performance at the awards. 1 KENDRICK LAMAR with U2 and DAVE CHAPPELLE, XXX/ DNA/New Freezer/King’s Dead
❚ How they did: Top-rate
❚ Here’s why: It was quite a show opener: An army of hooded soldiers marched in front of an American flag, with Lamar in the middle, crouching to the ground, when U2’s Bono and The Edge emerged. Chappelle showed up between songs to deliver winking commentary that was more an amusing distraction than a meaningful component. More impactful was Lamar’s evocative staging, as he danced around a figure in white pounding a drum, before the stage was flooded with a mass of dancers in red hoodies, who dropped one by one to gunshot noises one by one. This wasn’t quite as head-spinning as his legendary 2016 set, but still was compelling enough to make Lamar’s album loss to Bruno Mars sting that much more.
2 BEN PLATT and PATTI LuPONE, Somewhere/Don’t Cry for Me Argentina
❚ How they did: Broadway, baby! ❚ Here’s why: The Grammys briefly turned into the Tonys, and it was maybe the best segment of the show. LuPone was an absolute force of nature in a tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber, crushing
Evita’s Don’t Cry for Mein a performance that made us thankful they didn’t hand it off to any number of random pop stars. Meanwhile, Platt must’ve heard that Steven Spielberg is casting a new
West Side Story remake. He donned his best vintage sweater for his take on the musical’s Somewhere. He may have taken a few too many liberties with the iconic song, but bless his heart, he sure tried his best.
3 SZA, Broken Clocks
❚ How she did: Hope for the future. ❚ Here’s why: Need a reminder that SZA got robbed when she lost best new artist to Alessia Cara? We got one with her showstopper performance of Broken
Clocks — proving it’s possible to deliver nuanced vocals on the Grammys stage, a feat that more seasoned artists failed at. There’s a reason that, despite her shutout at the awards, she was this year’s most-nominated female artist.
4 RIHANNA, DJ KHALED and BRYSON TILLER, Wild Thoughts
❚ How they did: Wild, wild, wild. ❚ Here’s why: Save us, Rihanna, from this saltine-dry awards show. Khaled kicked off his performance with a spo-
ken-word intro of Khaled-isms, and as much as he tried to distract us throughout with his yelled-out asides, there was no overshadowing Rihanna and her dancers. Tiller reminded us that he’s on this song, blazing through his verse before Rih started dancing again, and we all forgot he existed.
5 LADY GAGA, Joanne/Million Reasons
❚ How she did: Angelic
❚ Here’s why: Lady Gaga is still trying her darndest to make Joanne happen, and listeners can be forgiven if we’ve tired of the album’s backstory. Featuring a piano decorated with angel wings, the performance started off on the overwrought side of emotional, punctuated with Gaga’s amusingly contextless whisper of “Time’s up.” Things got better when she launched into Million Reasons, the true banger on Joanne. Overall, it was very gauzy, very Gaga and good enough to place among the night’s best performances.
6KESHA, Praying
❚ How she did: Gut-punching. ❚ Here’s why: Kesha did not get on stage to deliver pitch-perfect vocals, flawless composure or a tidy narrative. Nothing about Kesha’s past few years has followed the normal arc of a redemption narrative, and her tortured take on Praying transcended the Grammys’ intention to treat it as a Me Too moment. Instead, viewers got a chorus led by Cyndi Lauper, Camila Cabello, Julia Michaels and Andra Day, willfully ceding the spotlight to a distraught Kesha, who whispered and wailed and struggled through the night’s most authentic performance.
7 BRUNO MARS and CARDI B, Finesse
❚ How they did: Finessed ❚ Here’s why: Things were getting sleepy on the Grammys telecast before Cardi B stormed the stage, making her Grammys debut with Finesse, even sneaking a verse of her new song Bartier
Cardi. Bruno crooned and grinned through his part of the song, breaking into a dance routine that really just robbed viewers of several more Cardi.
8CHILDISH GAMBINO, Terrified
❚ How he did: Slow and sexy ❚ Here’s why: Gambino ratcheted up the temperature in Madison Square Garden with his take on Terrified. His pitch-shifted Redbone vocals these were not, with Donald Glover delivering a falsetto that, backed by minimal instrumentals and punctuated by his smoldering gazes, got us all a little pregnant.
9 PINK, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken
❚ How she did: Grounded
❚ Here’s why: Yes, Pink can sing, even in jeans and a T-shirt and on an otherwise empty stage. Yet it’s worth saying that watching Pink deliver flawless vocals while suspended upside down is inherently more fun than a set straight out of VH1 Storytellers. Nevertheless, Pink had one of the best voices of the night.
10 LUIS FONSI, DADDY YANKEE and ZULEYKA RIVERA, Despacito
❚ How they did: Victorious
❚ Here’s why: Despacito failed to take home song or record of the year, but Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s performance still felt like a victory lap. Perhaps to remind viewers of the track’s Justin Bieber-less origin, Fonsi and Daddy Yankee delivered a performance sung entirely in Spanish. Surrounded by an army of gyrating dancers and backed by a Fourth of July’s worth of pyrotechnics,
Despacito’s win count seemed beside the point with a performance this joyful.
11 ELTON JOHN and MILEY CYRUS, Tiny Dancer
❚ How they did: Good enough! ❚ Here’s why: If Elton ends up being the Tony Bennett to Cyrus’ Lady Gagastyle image sanitation, we wouldn’t be mad. Like Gaga’s collaborations with Bennett, Cyrus’ performance was classic, ballgown-clad, and still kinda dull.
12 LITTLE BIG TOWN, Better Man
❚ How they did: Good, and deserved better
❚ Here’s why: Little Big Town just weren’t given enough to do during their performance, standing on a manufactured ledge and pretending to be on a windy New York rooftop. In fact, they could’ve used the sweeping orchestral arrangements that Sam Smith wasted.
13 LOGIC, ALESSIA CARA and KHALID, 1-800-273-8255
❚ How they did: Woke as can be. ❚ Here’s why: This was supposed to be the anthem of the 2018 Grammys, right? Three young performers, leaving it all on stage, Logic and Alessia Cara singing across the audience before Khalid emerges with suicide-attempt survivors in “You are not alone” tees. Yet, there’s something that doesn’t sit right with Logic’s insistence on delivering sermons during his awards show performances, including this one about how women ought to behave in the face of adversity.
14 CHRIS STAPLETON and EMMYLOU HARRIS, Wildflowers
❚ How they did: Well-intended, yet lacking
❚ Here’s why: One of the most enduring aspects of Tom Petty’s most beloved hits is their less-is-more imaginings and simply sung vocals. Stapleton and Harris are both country greats. Why the Grammys decided they needed extra wailing harmonies on a song that was defined by Petty’s plain, moving delivery is beyond us.
15 GARY CLARK JR. and JON BATISTE, Ain’t That a Shame/Maybellene
❚ How they did: Blues-lite ❚ Here’s why: Clark, every awards show’s favorite rocker, and jazz charmer Batiste were two obvious choices to deliver the tribute to Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. Did they phone in their performances? Somewhat. But the abbreviated set of covers was still enjoyable, thanks to Batiste’s charisma and the enduring power of the two legends’ songs. Otherwise, it was a reminder that if the Grammys set time aside for tribute performances, they ought to make them more compelling.
16 MAREN MORRIS, BROTHERS OSBOURNE and ERIC CHURCH, Tears in Heaven
❚ How they did: Mournful
❚ Here’s why: The Grammys chose Eric Clapton’s classic Tears in Heaven for the show’s tribute to the victims of the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, a somber moment handled by a group of performers who lived through the tragedy. With all respect to her male counterparts, Morris’ performance shone brightest, proving that perhaps she should’ve handled this song solo.
17SAM SMITH, Pray
❚ How he did: Sleepy ❚ Here’s why: Smith’s falsetto just doesn’t quit, even when he looks bored to tears and his lyrics are near-unintelligible. You know when singers forget the words to their own songs and just sing them phonetically, making them up as they go? That was Smith’s performance of Pray.
18 U2, Get Out of Your Own Way
❚ How they did: Useless
❚ Here’s why: Is there a better metaphor for U2’s new phase of wokeness than their Grammys performance? Set on a barge in front of the Statue of Liberty, their pre-taped take on Get Out of
Your Own Way was meticulously staged and vaguely political, without making a single meaningful moment. Next time, leave them on the barge.
19 STING and SHAGGY, Englishman in New York/ Don’t Make Me Wait
❚ How they did: Why?
❚ Here’s why: First, the Grammys had the audacity to invite Sting, a Brit, to sing his 1987 track Englishman in New York, a dad-joke of a concept that never even should’ve been entertained. Can we just bring back Kendrick Lamar?