The fallout from Will Smith’s slap threatens to overshadow music’s big night, but focus on the material and there is much to admire – particularly in 11-time nominee Jon Batiste
There is a longstanding and compelling argument that a significant proportion of people who tune into showbiz awards ceremonies do so with a certain schadenfreude. They’re less interested in seeing glitz and glamour or deserving artists being justly rewarded than seeing events going wrong or wildly off-piste. It’s an argument that has been reinforced over the past week, with discussion of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars showing no sign of abating as opinion pieces and blog posts on the subject are churned out.
This week’s big awards ceremony thus finds itself struggling to make itself noticed in the aftermath of last week’s big awards ceremony. The Grammys has valiantly plodded on, making announcements about what it has in store, without dislodging Smith and Rock from the headlines: what price the hot news that Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s retro-soul outfit Silk Sonic are opening the show, that the Foo Fighters’ appearance has been replaced by a hastily convened tribute to their late drummer Taylor Hawkins, or indeed the saga of Korean boyband BTS – two of whom have Covid, and may or may not perform – compared with one Hollywood star lamping another on live TV?
