At Tonight’s Grammy Awards, We Celebrate — Then, as the Weeknd Snub Shows, It’s Time to Fix Them

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Weeknd has announced a new, exclusive NFT collection of artwork and new music, that will be available exclusively on Nifty Gateway. The limited-time auction will be held on Saturday, April 3rd at 2 p.m.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIn an optimistic move toward normalcy, the Recording Academy has announced that the 64 th annual Grammy Awards will take place at the show’s traditional home of the Staples Center on Jan. 31, 2022 — exactly a year after the originally scheduled date of the 2021 awards, which were moved to March 14 due to a spike in coronavirus cases in Southern California.As usual, the show will broadcast live on the CBS television network from 8 – 11:30 p.m.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBritish rock duo Royal Blood will perform a three-song virtual concert — as avatars — during the 2021 Bloxy Awards, taking place on the online gaming platform Roblox on Saturday. The awards, “Roblox’s celebration of the passion, talent, and creativity of the Roblox community of creators and players,” will take place on Saturday, March 27 at 3 p.m.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIn celebration of Saturday’s premiere of the Tina Turner documentary “Tina,” HBO has teamed up with NTS radio for five hours of programming around the legendary singer’s career, featuring Arlo Parks, Dawn Richard and others. “Tina” is directed by Dan Lindsay and T.J.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorDaddy Yankee was named Songwriter of the Year for the third time and Sony Music Publishing won top publisher honors at the ASCAP 2021 Latin Music Awards on Monday night. Daddy Yankee’s haul for the evening added to his record-setting total of 42 ASCAP Latin Music Awards.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAmid all the headlines that came out of the 2021 Grammy Awards, one that should have been bigger is what a huge night it was for independent labels and artists: For the first time, more than half of the winners were independent artists — i.e.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOne of the many remarkable things about first time Grammy executive producer Ben Winston and Recording Academy chief Harvey Mason jr. is that they basically haven’t stopped working since the show ended on Sunday night.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIn recent years, the Grammy Awards have taken advantage of having so many top artists in one place by taping a second show a day or two after the main Grammy ceremony, all-star tributes to artists like Prince, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and others.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe 2021 Grammy Awards were an awards show like none before them, in countless ways — and although opinions are mixed about what worked and what didn’t, the consensus seem to be pretty positive, albeit with inevitable caveats.Perhaps most of all, the way the Grammys chose to handle the “In Memoriam” segment, which on most awards shows is fraught with omissions and misspellings and subsequent outrage, received some of the most positive reactions — especially

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s really not much of a stretch to expect a previous year’s big Grammy winner to repeat the following year, but Billie Eilish certainly was surprised to win the Best Record category at the ceremony on Sunday night: She started off her acceptance speech by going full Adele 2017, saying that Megan Thee Stallion actually deserved to win the award Billie herself had just won.“This is really embarrassing for me,” Eilish said, taking the stage with her brother and

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorCardi B and Megan Thee Stallion amped up the Grammys with a jaw-dropping performance of their NSFW anthem “WAP.” The duo performed strip club-themed version of the song, featuring a pole on a massive clear heel, and ending with the two rappers writhing together on a giant bed.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMegan The Stallion has won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. “Everybody is amazing,” she said of her fellow nominees during her tearful acceptance speech.“Secondly, I really just want to thank god because thank you for putting life into my body for me to be able to even be here today.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSince the Big Four Grammy categories expanded from five nominees to eight in 2019, the list of finalists has gotten more far-reaching and far more unpredictable.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMusiCares is the Recording Academy’s charitable wing, and its annual concert during Grammy Week is its main source of fundraising virtually every year.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorWith the Grammy Awards coming up on Sunday, it’s remarkable that interim Recording Academy president/CEO Harvey Mason, jr. has time to talk with the press — although that could have been said at virtually any point in the past 14 months.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorTaylor Swift gave a small spoken preview of her Grammy performance on Sunday in a post on CBS’s Twitter account, revealing that she’s reuniting with two of the collaborators who helped her make her nominated album “Folklore.”She revealed that in preparation for the performance, the three have quarantined together in a house for the entire week.“The one thing I can tell you about my Grammy performance that isn’t highly confidential is that my Grammy performance

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorWhen the 2021 Grammy Award nominations were announced in November, thousands of people were stunned to see that the Weeknd — one of the most commercially and critically successful artists of the past year, whose single “Blinding Lights” just became the first song ever to spend a full year in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 — was not nominated for any awards.The inexplicable and/or suspicious snub, the biggest in Grammy history, could only be explained as the

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Grammy Awards considered some 800 people for the “In Memoriam” segment of the 2021 show, first-time executive producer Ben Winston tells Variety.While it was not unexpected that a large number of musicians and executives would be under consideration amid a global pandemic that has killed more than 2.5 million people worldwide, as Winston says, “That is a brutally sad number of people who would be in contention to be featured in the show.” The ones who are not

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs rumored, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak — who just last week released the ‘70s throwback single “Leave the Door Open,“ under the name Silk Sonic — will be appearing on the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, if this unusually playful tweet from the Recording Academy is any indication.“.@BrunoMars & @AndersonPaak We have been trying to call you all week,” it reads. “Have you changed your numbers? We would love for #silksonic to make their TV debut at the #GRAMMYs.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” has been smashing records practically since it was first released late in November of 2019 — and on Monday it broke what might be the most momentous one of all: It became the first song to spend a full year in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.That dwarfs the previous record, for Post Malone’s “Circles,” which hung in for 39 weeks (it’s a bit of an inter-family record, since Post happens to be the Weeknd’s labelmate on Republic