Grammy Chief Harvey Mason Jr. Talks Sunday’s Big Show, COVID Safety, Nominating Committees and The Weeknd

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorPatti Smith — singer, songwriter, poet, author and icon — will be sharing her writing in a new weekly newsletter on Substack.In a message posted Wednesday on her highly entertaining Instagram page, Smith wrote that she aims to use the newsletter to “form an inter-connective body of work for a responsive community,” posting “weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen, news of the mind, pieces of this

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorLizzo, Megan Thee Stallion, Foo Fighters, Lana Del Rey, Tyler, the Creator, Janelle Monae, Tame Impala and many more are scheduled to perform at the 2021 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. The event’s 20th anniversary edition is scheduled to take place September 2–5, 2021 on the Bonnaroo Farm, located 60 miles southeast of Nashville in Manchester, TN.

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 EditorMemphis rapper NLE Choppa was arrested Sunday in Davie, Fla.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSome artists are coy about their sexuality, and some just go for it.

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 EditorTonight, we come together — virtually — for the Grammy Awards, “Music’s Biggest Night,” and do our best to celebrate the music of the worst year of so many people’s lives.

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 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.