Grammys 2022: The place Was the Rock?

[ad_1]

For greater than three hours final evening, the Grammy Awards took over CBS to have fun the most important music releases from the previous yr. Whereas a protracted checklist of artists took to the stage – together with rap, nation, Latin, hip-hop, R&B and jazz – rock was conspicuously absent from the proceedings.

The entire rock classes, together with the steel and various awards, had been offered in the course of the “Premiere Ceremony,” a pre-telecast occasion through which the Recording Academy honored greater than 80 different winners deemed much less worthy of tv airtime.

Foo Fighters swept the three rock classes this yr: Finest Rock Album, Finest Rock Tune and Finest Rock Efficiency. The band was initially scheduled to carry out in the course of the televised portion of the awards however pulled out following the current loss of life of drummer Taylor Hawkins.

The Recording Academy opted towards changing Foo Fighters, leaving an enormous rock gap in this system. Such a call can be comprehensible if there weren’t apparent alternate choices, however that wasn’t the case this yr. Two legendary acts – AC/DC and Paul McCartney – had been multi-nominees. Wolfgang Van Halen, a rising star from a household of rock royalty, may have additionally match the invoice. In recent times, Elton John, Sting, U2 and Aerosmith every carried out alongside different artists. Was no one up for collaboration this yr? Crimson Scorching Chili Peppers simply launched a new album that’s being hailed as a welcome return to kind. They’re earlier Grammy winners whose fan base largely aligns with that of the Foo Fighters. Did the Recording Academy even name?

Some might argue that the Grammy telecast, already bloated with performances, merely couldn’t slot in one other act. Nonetheless, this yr they launched a brand new function, having artists from lesser-known classes carry out into and out of economic breaks. Even when the Grammys didn’t need to give rock music a full three- or four-minute efficiency, certainly they might have discovered a few 30-second spots to focus on what stays one of the well-liked musical genres on the earth.

In equity, there seemed to be some refined efforts to sneak rock artists into the occasion: Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker performed alongside H.E.R. and Lenny Kravitz, a video tribute to Hawkins was accompanied by playback of Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” and nation star Chris Stapleton actually seemed and gave the impression of a golden god as he delivered a robust rendition of his music “Chilly.”

In the end, the sixty fourth Grammy Awards had been a comparatively pleasurable affair. Trevor Noah was a positive host, many (however not all) of the performers gave commendable performances and Las Vegas supplied a fantastic background for the occasion. It was flashy, glamorous and every little thing producers promise out of “music’s greatest evening.” But it surely did not rock.