The Lady's Gone Ga-Ga

Watching Adele beat Beyonce three times made you think FAKE GRAMMYS! Beyonce is an outofthebox performer, she thinks, conceptualises and then uses costume and dance and vocals to give you an experience you never forget. Adele has a good voice but she is unremarkable, and then she messes up not one but two Grammy Live shows; one is forgivable, two is just being careless (much like second marriages).

Then there was Lady G. What in the world has happened to her? She was pure pop entertainment at one point, now she's wearing pink hats because she was "wearing a hat in the bathtub when she was writing" her Joanne album, or wearing nothing and singing with Metallica, unintelligibly. She's done things to her face - no, she was not born that way - and is trying too hard to be Real. That was when she was singing Bad Romance, or was with Tony Bennett, or doing a Julie Andrews homage. Now she's becoming a caricature, trying to "find herself", (no doubt we'll bump into her at an ashram in Pondicherry soon), and it's embarrassing to watch.

Talking about Real, that was Gary Clark Jr and William Bell doing Born Under a Bad Sign, which was my anthem growing up and even more relevant, alas, today. No histrionics, no epilepsy-inducing light shows in the background, no wearing a boob-baring male equivalent for attention - an embellished jockstrap perhaps? - it was just great, cool music.

But my favourite of the night was James Corden. What an entrance. It's not just that he's funny, he's genuine when dealing with others. I can't tolerate the Jimmys and their talk shows; you can tell they want to be more memorable than their guests. Like journalists who try to be more on-the-page than the people they're interviewing. 

Ego is something you have to own very delicately: It can be the gift that never stops giving in terms of creativity, or you can be Lady G.

Grammys in tune, and not

Weren't the Grammys great? It threw up real talent, not the teenage pop crap a la Taylor Swift who's old enough now to know better (and whose reaction when Ed Sheeran won was so painfully "Look at me, aren't I magnanimous and well, look at me, not Ed, look at meeee!" I cringed). Alabama Shakes with their black, cool af beat & their love for the sound and feel of their music, the utter genius of Kendrick Lamar who also fights a very real fight decades after the civil rights movement, Diplo and Skrillex on the same stage, even the song Girl Crush and Hollywood Vampires were such highlights (but why does Johnny Depp look like a wannabe rock star starting out 30 years too late when Joe Perry doesn't have to get up off a couch to achieve the same effect? It can't be because we're used to seeing him as an actor, look at Jared Leto). 
Unfortunately, the show also felled 2 great talents. Adele went off-key (pretty much like Jesus failing to turn water into wine) and Lady Gaga's homage to Bowie was missing a certain fluidity although her heart was in the right place, apparently as a new tat on her skin. I couldn't have put it better than Bowie's son Duncan Jones' ouch-inducing Tweet: "'Over-excited or irrational, typically as a result of infatuation or excessive enthusiasm; mentally confused.' Damn it! What IS that word!?'"
I know everyone's excited about Demi Lovato's new sound (as in no one knew she could sing) but can I just say she seems to try too hard, it has to be effortless like Leona Lewis to make us acknowledge there is no doubt about how talented you are.
On a last note slash plea: Can someone stop LL Cool J? He's about as interesting a host as watching your accountant run through your tax returns.