What if they gave an Awards show and nobody gave an award?
That's almost what the 2012 Grammy Awards came to.
The broadcast lasted around 3 1/2 hours when, they really could have finished if off in about 10 minutes.
Hand Adele her trophies and give the Foo Fighters theirs. Dole out a couple others. Easy-peasy.
The Grammys have definitely been streamlined. Numerous categories were eliminated (snubbing genres like the blues) while others were shunted to the non-televised hinterlands.
Then there was the bizarre treatment of rock. A number of rock awards were in that non-broadcast portion, yet there was more than a little of it during the televised broadcast.
Rap was an even more non-existent presence.
But without a great deal of suspense for the awards themselves, the only real questions would be how the performances themselves would be.
The first question was how producers would respond to yesterday's tragic death of Whitney Houston.
Without much turnaround time, the television broadcast began just over 26 hours after Houston's death, the tribute was kept simple.
Host LL Cool J, when he came out, began the show with a prayer, keeping it brief and too the point. A nice classy gesture.
Every major awards show has its "those who have passed away" in the previous year. Houston's face was the last one shown in this year's montage.
That segued to Jennifer Hudson, who delivered a performance that was the antithesis of Christina Aguilera's performance at Etta James' recent funeral. No inappropriate clothing. No oversinging. Just pure class.
Hudson nailed "I Will Always Love You" striking a balance between Dolly Parton's classic original approach and Houston's beloved full-on version. It was one of the takeaway moments of the night.
The night's other tear-jerking takeaway moment came earlier with a tribute segment to a performer who is not gone yet.
Glen Campbell, diagnosed with Alzheimer's, released the final album of his career last year, with an accompanying farewell tour. The diagnosis cut short what was an interesting artistic resurgence for Campbell, who was putting out good releases not unlike what Johnny Cash was doing with the "American" albums.
The Band Perry kicked off the tribute with a solid version of "Gentle On My Mind." Blake Shelton followed with a slightly tentative, but ultimately agreeable take on "Southern Nights."
The man himself followed to sing the obvious song one would expect him to sing for his last major national performance -- "Rhinestone Cowboy." Any doubts about how Campbell might pull it off in his condition were erased. He nailed it, ending by singing "Rhinestone cowboy and cowgirl" as the audience gave him a deserved standing ovation in the most poignant moment of the night.
Another successful tribute came was delivered by Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt, who teamed up to perform Etta James' classic "Sunday Kind of Love," showing a canny move away from the obvious of covering "At Last."
The moving tributes were the takeaway moments from the broadcast on the positive side of the ledger.
The negative side was led by the dual appearances by Chris Brown, who won the Best R&B album for F.A.M.E. It was the first appearance at the awards for Breezy since he assaulted then-girlfriend Rihanna the night before the two were scheduled to perform together at the 2009 Grammys.
Seeing Brown applauded after performance of his new single "Turn Up The Music" primarily evoked nausea, given the amount of apologists he's had since the incident and given that he's been prone to homophobic asshattery.
Honestly, the performance itself was enough to disturb the stomach. He danced around a set stolen from a Q-Bert game while dressed in a letterman's jacket. He couldn't be bothered to actually sing, as his vocals were pre-recorded and autotuned. He can dance, but when did "best dancer" become a Grammy category?
One wonders if anyone noticed the irony that Brown lip-synching an autotuned track and won an award from the same organization that took away an award from Milli Vanilli for lip syncing.
As if his solo performance wasn't bad enough, he reappeared later, dressed like Run-DMC circa 1985, during a mini-dance music set with David Guetta, Deadmau5 and Foo Fighters. Dressing like a beloved hip-hop icon in an effort to distract folks from the fact that a number of people intensely dislike you? Talk about tricky.
Much more watchable, though more befuddling, was Nicki Minaj's performance of "Roman Holiday." It hearkened back to the days of "MTV World Premiers" when you'd sit down for a 10-minute long "director's cut" with three minutes of song and seven of acting, special effects and other filler.
Pre-taped sketch with a Pope-ish guy? Check. Robed choir? Check. Levitation? Check. Dancing and flames calling to mind the fictional Broadway show "Satan's Alley" from the movie "Staying Alive"? Check. Fake British accent lifted from Billie Jo Armstrong? Actual song? Actual Song? Actual so-oh, there it is. Check.
Still, Minaj is an entertaining, engaging performer and she at least made the bloated silliness (in the "Gaga Slot") watchable.
Minaj didn't leave with the Best New Artist trophy, which went to honorary yacht rockers Bon Iver, who were neither best nor new.
The Grammys circa 2012 were also a time to promote new singles. Brown and Minaj did it. So did Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band opened the broadcast with "We Take Care of Our Own," the track that wouldn't have sounded out of place on "Born In the U.S.A.". It also injected a rare bit of topicality into the proceedings.
Paul McCartney performed "My Valentine", one of two standards-style songs he wrote for his new album "Kisses on the Bottom", which is in the tradition of, well, Rod Stewart's continuous flogging of "The American Songbook."
McCartney, in better voice than he was on "Saturday Night Live" a year ago, fared better when he closed the show with energetic performances of his songs from the medley on side two of "Abbey Road", complete with a guitar jam including the likes of Springsteen, Joe Walsh and Dave Grohl.
The only thing missing as the cherry on top of this little classic rock sundae would have been if Adele had shown up at the end to sing "Her Majesty."
Not that Adele wasn't on camera enough as it was. It was her night, as she pulled off a 6-for-6 sweep in the categories she was nominated in. She also pulled off her ubiquitous hit "Rolling in the Deep," her first time time performing since throat surgery. Even if her voice wasn't at 100 percent peak, it and the song, were well enough to justify the plaudits and sales.
The Beach Boys made an appearance as well, though it was not the "historic reunion" the broadcast teasers claimed it was, not with Carl and Dennis Wilson having passed away in 1998 and 1983, respectively.
Maroon 5 opened the mini-set with "Surfer Girl", showing that for all of Adam Levine's skills, he's not Carl Wilson. Foster the People pulled off the look of the Beach Boys circa 1964-65 and picked things up with their take on "Wouldn't It Be Nice?"
The Beach Boys themselves did "Good Vibrations." With Carl gone, Brian Wilson took the high part with aplomb. He fared better than Mike Love, who moved like an animatronic robot version of Mike Love in some sort of Disney Hall of Beach Boys.
Still going far beyond the "step into the unknown origins", the Foo Fighters, while hardly the only purveyors of "real rock" left, continue to be one of its rock solid proponents.
The band solidly performed "Walk", the best track of its Grammy-winning "Wasting Light" album. The Foos, despite their best efforts, didn't click quite so well in the dance-electronic section, a segment that felt undercooked.
It was also a wee bit ironic that Grohl and Co. were in the dance-electronic mini set considering his acceptance speech (for "Walk" as best rock performance). Grohl said, " "It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer; it's about what goes on in here (heart) and it's about what goes on in here (head)."
In the Nice Timing Department, Grohl's passioned speech, the best of the night, was cut off..with the song playing coming from LMFAO, who sound imperfect and incorrect despite going through the computer.
Rihanna's performance on her own was reasonable enough, but when Coldplay joined her for "Princess of China", the overall effect was underwhelming to sleep-inducing, especially with the earnest Brits not at their best.
At least the producers kept the appearances of Rihanna and Brown spaced far enough apart to keep things from being more awkward.
On the other hand, it can't be a coincidence that a song by self-selling success story Civil Wars was all that separated Brown's Grammy acceptance speech from Taylor Swift performance of the song "Mean", which has the recurring lines, "Someday I'll be big enough so you can't hit me and all you're ever gonna be is mean."
Elsewhere through the show, there was Bruno Mars (energetic and trying to bring back the 'bands in matching suits' look), Katy Perry (apparently previewing her halftime show for Super Bowl VXX) and Kelly Clarkson and Jason Aldean doing "Don't You Wanna Stay" (with best 'Idol' alum Clarkson carrying the day when Aldean's mic cut out).
Also worth noting was Stevie Wonder's appearance to introduce McCartney, though it only served as a reminder that it has been far too long since Wonder's prodigious and once-prolific musical gifts have born fruit in terms of new material.
On the non-musical front, there was a pointless appearance from NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and New York Giants players Mario Manningham and Victor Cruz to present an award. Perrette's appearance was to remind us that the Grammys were on CBS, apparently while Manningham and Cruz, although they might be able to just autotune their way through it, have not, for know, shown a desire to join the music biz.
Speaking of the music biz, the one moment where more viewers were likely to nod off like they'd just eaten tryptophan-laden Thanksgiving dinner was the speech by NARAS president Neil Portnow. It was an odd mix of seeming lifts from United Way PSAs and finger wagging in which Portnow unintentionally came off like Mr. Mackey from "South Park," all but saying "The Internet is bad. Mmmkay?"
But for an awards show known for its misfires (such as unintentionally turning Jethro Tull into a punchline) and years of being notoriously out-of-touch, the Grammys Circa 2012 managed not to embarrass themselves.
The good performances outnumbered the missteps, even with the whiff of calculation ii Brown on twice, Swift's song after Brown, the Foo's appearance at a dancefest. It might have been quease-inducing to see so much Brown. It might have been a challenge to figure out the bombastic inscrutability of Nicki Minaj's performance, but at the end of the day, this was the night for Adele and the tributes that the various performers got right, particularly for Houston, Campbell and James.
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