Each year, we meet the Grammys with the kind of grudging obligation we usually reserve for medical check-ups: no, we don't really want to bother, but we'll show up because of the remote chance we might discover something interesting in a place where nothing interesting should be happening. And so on Sunday night, out of this sense of self-preserving curiosity, we flipped on the show (on a three-hour tape-delay; nice work, Recording Academy! Very brave of you to take a principled stand on the encroachment of technology and make half the country wait to see the things everyone was twittering/blogging/sexting about), blasted through several hours of the usual nonsense on the DVR, and then went to bed, assuming this show would at best mirror last year's decent-but-not-great ratings performance. But imagine our surprise to wake today, the morning after the show had faded into nightmares in which Beyonce's heavily armored, backup-dancing SWAT team invades our home to demand we immediately "put a ring on it," to discover the telecast was nothing short of a Nielsen Bonanza™ for CBS, pulling in the best numbers in six years. How could this have happened? After the jump, we try to work through the mystery of the 52nd Grammys Awards' sudden, blockbuster success:
Let's Finally Figure Out This Taylor Swift Situation
Yes, we're aware that Taylor Swift is a very popular musician among the Disney Channel/Nickolodeon set, who have been acculturated by an endless parade of music-centric, tween-seeking TV shows to consume anything produced by a questionably talented person who looks adorable holding a guitar or microphone. We like to think we're as "plugged into" what the kids like as anyone else who regularly makes day-long demographic research trips to American Girl Place disguised as a suburban mom with no idea which doll to buy. But we still don't get it. Does she even really sing, or is that kind of breathy, not-singing-thing she does her whole shtick? Is she famous because she was once in Miley Cyrus's band, but left to escape Hannah Montana's suffocating shadow? And so we tuned into the Grammys, having heard much pre-show hype about how this would be Taylor Swift's Year, to finally get this business settled. This phenomenon may have occurred up to 18 million other times among people between the ages of 25-50 on Sunday night.
The Black Eyed Peas Played, And They Are Very Discerning About Their Live Appearances
The Black Eyed Peas, a wildly successful supergroup comprised of former members of Wild Orchids, C+C Music Factory and Another Bad Creation who joined together with the single-minded goal of producing the greatest NBA time-out music imaginable, are almost hermetic in their avoidance of the spotlight, preferring to let The Work stand on its own. When it was announced that the Peas would be performing, their legion of loyal fans showed up by the millions, knowing this could be their last chance to see their heroes create their magic in a live setting for quite some time. Luckily for everyone, a savvy marketing executive caught the group backstage, offered them a $15 Taco Bell gift card to change the lyrics for "Boom Boom Pow" to the items on the fast-food chain's dollar menu, then convinced them to perform the new song via webcam in a Staples Center janitorial closet during a Grammys commercial break, so the usual, interminable wait between appearances was mercifully short.
The Lady Gaga Headwear Factor
Easily the most exciting thing happening in pop music this year is the top of chart-dominating megastar Lady Gaga's head, and she and her criminally insane milliner did not disappoint. Though Gaga opted to go hatless for her duet with Filthy Undead Elton John (against a fame-factory backdrop providing powerful visual commentary on the celebrity they so desperately avoid), the millions of gawking viewers who were drawn to the Grammys by curiosity about what deranged works of art might find their ways onto Gaga's pate were not disappointed. Backstage, our Lady double-fisted her trophies while fragments from the original Death Star appeared to pierce her skull, while earlier in the show, various cutaway shots of the audience captured her piece de resistance in its full glory: a gilded, head-encircling cage in which a mynah bird named Art and a cockatoo called Commerce pecked each other to death, spraying geysers of blood upon her fellow nominees's designer gowns.
The American Idol Reason
About 30 million people watch American Idol, the last true cultural juggernaut of the network TV age, each week. The Grammys drew 25.8 million viewers. Both feature singing of varying degrees of competence. This seems like as good an explanation as any we can come up with.
Everyone Wanted To Get Another Look At Michael Jackson's Kids
Following the All-Star Vomit-Inducing 3D Tribute To Michael Jackson, Grammy producers trotted out MJ progeny Paris and Prince, whom the public last glimpsed while grieving their father at the All-Star Vomit-Inducing Michael Jackson Memorial Service. In matching outfits inspired by the King of Pop's iconic fashion sense, the nervous children thanked the world for celebrating their Daddy, while the world, unable to help themselves, noted once again the total absence of any physical similarity between Daddy and his ostensible biological offspring. And then, as untold millions of viewers satisfied their curiosity about the children likely to go back into protective seclusion until there's another award for them to receive on behalf of their father, the camera cut back to the audience, where it found that Gaga had refreshed her head-cage with new avian combatants named Michael and Fame, giving us all one more thing to think about in the ensuing flurry of blood-spattered, searching beaks.