Grammys 2018 Time. This year’s Grammy Awards were all about the performances, of which there were many times more (23) than there were actual awards given out during the three-and-a-half hour show. It was also all about performers young and old attempting — sometimes successfully and sometimes not — to bridge the generational divide in music. And it was not, thankfully, all about that bass. That bass is finally over.
Sam Smith was the evening’s big winner, returning to the stage every hour, on the hour, to collect each of his four awards. Beck was the surprise of the night, winning not only Best Rock Album but also Album of the Year, for which he beat out Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and Pharrell.
But the awards felt like an afterthought — punctuation marks between performances meant to chase higher ratings than the act of doling out golden gramophones is capable of generating. And those performances were a little heavy on the ballads and a little low on the showmanship, with the night saved from interminable boredom by a handful of worthy showstoppers.