Grammys

The various film and TV awards ceremonies so far this year have been a predictable round; there have been few surprising winners, and the events both on-stage and off have largely been well-behaved and respectable. All hail, then, to the Grammys, which has managed to take conventional expectations of what an awards show should be and has subverted them considerably, combining everything from a transcendental comeback by one of music’s greatest stars to one of the night’s winners being dragged off by police in handcuffs. First things first though: the Grammys represented yet another victory for Taylor Swift, a woman who, at this rate, is going to become TIME’s person of the year for a second year in a row.

More than 12 million people watched Sunday night as Sam Smith and Kim Petras performed their award-winning song "Unholy" on the Grammys stage. Smith, a male soul and pop singer who now identifies as nonbinary, fashioned himself as a bulbous Satan, prancing around in latex pants and heeled boots, a bedazzled cane, and a top hat with devil horns. Plenty has been said about Smith's cosplay — and the deterioration of his (their?) appearance since "coming out" — but many glossed over his sidekick, Kim Petras. Petras, thirty, sings the second verse of "Unholy" and spent the Grammys performance locked in a cage. She is signed with Republic Records and has released two albums and an EP called "Slut Pop". The German singer's tracks are rife with sexual imagery.

In last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, James R. Hagerty and Anne Steele argue that pop artists are using more imperfect — that is, half or slant — rhymes than before because of the pressure to be original in the age of Spotify. This, plus the influence of rap, which “requires verbal virtuosity,” they argue, “has upped the ante on originality in rhyming.” Color me unconvinced. Olivia Rodrigo rhymes “smart” with “car” in “Brutal.” Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” rhymes “full 180” with “crazy.” For Hagerty and Steele, these are examples of stunning creativity. But lyricists have been using slant rhymes for a long time. Why? Mainly because they are easier than perfect rhymes, at least in English.

Joy Villa shot to infamy in 2017 by donning a Make America Great Again dress. She set eyeballs rolling again last year with her pro-life fetus-in-the-womb outfit. How could she top that, you ask? Why, by dressing as the border wall of course! Her outfit included a barbed wire necklace, a Pink Floyd-inspired border wall gown and a MAGA handbag (handMAG?), and was designed by Desi Lee Allinger-Nelson. Cockburn caught up with Villa last night in New York to find out the gossip from the ceremony. ‘On the red carpet, I was getting a lot of side-eye from celebrities, which I kind of expected,’ she said. ‘Camila Cabello smiled at me, and Lele Pons, the YouTuber was really nice, she came up and was like “I love your dress, I’m in gold and you’re in silver!

When the finalists for the 2019 Grammy Awards are announced this week, it’ll be official: the blues is no longer an African American music. I’m an African American Blues guitarist. I came of age in my father’s ramshackle juke joint, Tabby’s Blues Box and Heritage Hall in Louisiana. I was the last 20th-century ‘folk-blues’ artist to be discovered by a folklorist from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. I played a blues guitarist in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and won a Grammy for its soundtrack. But when I submitted my latest album, Hotel Voodoo, for consideration under ‘Best Contemporary Blues Album 2019’, I learned that I no longer fit the Grammys’ criteria for blues. https://audioboom.