With Fires Burning, the Grammys Made a Choice: On With the Show
The New York Times
Sunday’s event has high-profile contests featuring Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan. But the big question may be whether the show strikes the right tone.
On Jan. 8, as wildfires were spreading across Los Angeles, Harvey Mason Jr., the head of the Grammy Awards, looked out the window of his home in the Hollywood Hills and saw smoke everywhere. “Grab a bag,” he told his wife, and they headed east to Arizona. Throughout the six-hour drive, Mason said, he was in calls to coordinate relief efforts and raise money for music professionals through MusiCares, the Grammys’ affiliated charity.
The next order of business was the Grammy ceremony itself.
The 67th annual show, scheduled for Feb. 2, was then a little over three weeks away, and questions were starting to percolate about the choice faced by the Recording Academy and Mason, its chief executive. Fires were still raging, including in areas like Pacific Palisades and Altadena, where many in the music industry had lost their homes. Would going forward with a glitzy, celebrity-filled awards show come across as tone-deaf and insensitive to people’s suffering? Was it even safe? Or could a retooled Grammy ceremony serve as a needed symbol of perseverance for Los Angeles?
Mason and the academy decided that the show would go on, betting that by early February the fires would be sufficiently tamed, and that the music community — and television audiences across the country — would be ready for the Grammys, still with all its spectacle but also a somber new purpose to help rebuild Los Angeles.
“Postponing the show for me didn’t feel like the right thing for the city of Los Angeles,” Mason said in an interview. “We wanted to make sure that we showed a resilience and strength and unity in a time when I thought we were going to really, really need it.”
In many ways Sunday’s show, to be broadcast live by CBS and streamed on Paramount+, has the hallmarks of a classic Grammy night, with star power and crisscrossing narratives about the state of pop music. Beyoncé is the top nominee, with 11 nods, and after four failed attempts in the past could finally win album of the year for “Cowboy Carter,” her high-concept stew of country, R&B, rock and even opera.
