Newswire Big winners at the Grammys: Winehouse, old people

by Sean O'Neal February 11, 2008
Beginning with a beyond-the-grave duet between Alicia Keys and a digitally reanimated Frank Sinatra, flowing into a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Beatles odes, nearly choking to death on will.i.am's attempt to ruin all music forever, and ending in a creaky ménage-a-trois between John Fogerty, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard, last night's 50th Annual Grammy Awards was all about the old people, a theme that carried over into Herbie Hancock "stealing" the Best Album award for River: The Joni Letters–which makes total sense in the light of day, considering this is the same academy that obviously bought every known copy of Steely Dan's Two Against Nature. Much to the blog world's collective chagrin, of course, the biggest non-story was how much Amy Winehouse did not fuck up: The retro-soul songstress–last seen smoking crack and wailing over her incarcerated husband–pulled it together for a sassy satellite performance (introduced by Cuba Gooding, Jr. in a truly WTF moment) of "You Know I'm No Good" and "Rehab," the latter of which took home Record Of The Year honors to Winehouse's obvious surprise (she won five Grammys in all). Because he lost to Hancock, Kanye West can't complain about how not getting Album Of The Year was the result of a black man not getting a chance; but anyway, he seemed more than satisfied with his Best Rap Album win, which gave him an opportunity both to show off his new "Mama" fade and pontificate on the state of modern hip-hop–at least until the producers interrupted him with "wrap it up" music, which West quickly put a stop to by playing the My Mom Just Died, Assholes card. West also took part in the show's one bona fide historic performance: A surprise duet with Daft Punk, making its first ever television appearance and only slightly overshadowed by Kanye's glowing sunglasses and awkward self-censorship:



Other observations: Barack Obama beat out two former presidents for the Best Spoken Word award, which he should just nonchalantly place on the podium at every debate from here on out; Chaka Khan is apparently still around; Art Brut are now shilling for T-Mobile; for the right paycheck, John Mayer would probably do a guitar solo in your living room.

What'd we miss?

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