Lifestyle
Grammys 2024: 10 takeaways from music's biggest night (Taylor's version)
Taylor Swift poses with Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus of boygenius after the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Taylor Swift poses with Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus of boygenius after the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
The Grammys are nothing if not a three-and-a-half-hour infomercial for the music industry: The telecast foregrounds music’s biggest stars, programs performances that span many genres and generations, and otherwise assembles a digestible package of major milestones and musical moments. Sunday night’s festivities were no different, so here are this year’s major storylines and other takeaways, starting with… no, you’ll never guess. Wait for it…
1. Somewhere along the way, we have left a world in which Taylor Swift dominates the cultural conversation and entered a world in which Taylor Swift is the world and we are just tiny specks of flotsam, floating listlessly in a sea consisting of her disembodied essence.
Okay, so we kinda knew, going in, that Swift would be a significant player in Sunday night’s Grammys, given that she was nominated for six awards and that, when it comes to music news in 2024, all roads lead back to her red-lipsticked visage. But few could have seen Sunday’s onslaught coming. Swift’s Midnights won album of the year — her record-breaking fourth win in that category alone — as well as best pop vocal album. And, of course, the singer made a splashy entrance and danced and sang along during performances even when seemingly everyone else was seated. But Swift set aside her headline-grabbingest moment for her first victory speech, in which she announced the imminent arrival of a new album titled The Tortured Poets Department, out April 19. Which means the conversation around Swift is only going to get busier and louder and more all-consuming, with next Sunday’s Super Bowl just six Swift-packed days away.
Miley Cyrus accepts the best pop solo performance award for “Flowers” from Mariah Carey on stage during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
Miley Cyrus accepts the best pop solo performance award for “Flowers” from Mariah Carey on stage during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
2. Saying “women did well” is underselling the degree to which women dominated the night.
Remember the 2018 Grammys, in which men dominated the major categories and the then-head of the Recording Academy later made a boneheaded comment about how women need to “step up”? Six years later, up has been stepped. All nine of the categories represented in Sunday night’s telecast were won by women artists, spread across seven different names: Swift (album of the year, best pop vocal album), Miley Cyrus (record of the year, best pop solo performance), Victoria Monét (best new artist), Billie Eilish (song of the year), SZA (best R&B song), Lainey Wilson (best country album) and Karol G (best música urbana album). Elsewhere, bands like boygenius and Paramore won big in categories representing rock and alternative music, while the performances in the telecast’s first half were dominated by big names such as Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, Eilish, Cyrus and SZA.
Tracy Chapman performs on stage during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
Tracy Chapman performs on stage during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
3. Two tear-jerking performances ruled them all. Early on, country star Luke Combs participated in a segment about his hit cover of the 1988 Tracy Chapman classic “Fast Car.” Then the song’s familiar guitar part kicked in, at which point the camera pulled back slowly to reveal that the instrument was being played by… Chapman herself. The two stars then turned the song into a true duet, trading verses and smiles, and it cannot be overstated just how thrilled Combs looked from start to finish. It was a gorgeous moment all around, not to mention a chance for Chapman to take a well-earned victory lap for what is, no exaggeration, one of the best songs ever written by anyone, ever. And, speaking of the best songs ever written, Joni Mitchell performed at the Grammys for the first time (!!!), leading a lovely rendition of “Both Sides Now” with the aid of Brandi Carlile, Lucius, SistaStrings, Allison Russell, Blake Mills and Jacob Collier. There aren’t enough flowers to fling in the direction of either performance.
SZA accepts the best R&B song award for “Snooze” on stage during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
SZA accepts the best R&B song award for “Snooze” on stage during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
4. Speaking of tear-jerking, the best speeches showed how much the Grammys can mean to the artists who win them. SZA was nominated nine times and won three awards Sunday, and when she took home best R&B song, her emotions flooded out of her; it was clear that the moment represented the culmination of years of hard work. Ditto Victoria Monét, whose long career made a minor mockery of the category “best new artist.” (The Grammys would do themselves a huge favor by changing that category’s name to something like “breakthrough artist,” given how long artists toil en route to newness.) Both speeches presented a firm rebuttal to the idea that these awards mean nothing to the folks who win them.
Honoree Jay-Z accepts the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award with Blue Ivy Carter onstage during the 66th Grammy Awards.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The RIAA
hide caption
toggle caption
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The RIAA
Honoree Jay-Z accepts the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award with Blue Ivy Carter onstage during the 66th Grammy Awards.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The RIAA
5. Jay-Z didn’t spare the Recording Academy. The rap superstar won the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, and in his victory speech — for which he brought daughter Blue Ivy onstage — he lightly blistered the Academy for its glass ceilings and other missteps. After chiding voters for never awarding album of the year to his wife Beyoncé, Jay-Z added a burn that had the crowd tittering nervously (“Some of y’all don’t belong in the category”) and doubled down with a line that’ll get quoted for years to come: “When I get nervous, I tell the truth.” (Those words are in competition with SZA’s “I’m not a very attractive cryer” for the title of “Grammy quote most likely to get stitched onto throw pillows and sold on Etsy.” In third place: Billie Eilish, whose surprise at winning song of the year was expressed via the words, “I’m shocked outta my balls.”)
Stevie Wonder performs on stage honoring Tony Bennett during the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
Stevie Wonder performs on stage honoring Tony Bennett during the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images
6. The In Memoriam segment went long, but it worked. Twenty minutes is a generous dollop of time to pay tribute to the performers and other music-adjacent figures who’d died in the preceding year. But, wow, we’ve lost a lot of powerhouses lately. Stevie Wonder gave a warm tribute to Tony Bennett, Annie Lennox performed “Nothing Compares 2 U” for Sinéad O’Connor (and closed the performance by calling for a ceasefire, a moment that felt true to O’Connor’s own activism), Jon Batiste and Ann Nesby played a medley for the music-industry executive Clarence Avant, and Fantasia Barrino and Adam Blackstone served up a rollicking cover of “Proud Mary” for Tina Turner. What made it work, besides the emotion involved, was the way the performances echoed the energy and spirit of the figures who’d died; Barrino, for example, understood that the best way to honor Turner was to embrace and echo her indefatigable showmanship, rather than merely mourn.
Killer Mike poses in the press room with the Grammys for best rap performance, best rap album and best rap song during the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Killer Mike poses in the press room with the Grammys for best rap performance, best rap album and best rap song during the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
7. Killer Mike won three Grammys… and then got arrested. The powerhouse rapper Killer Mike — perhaps still best known as one-half of Run the Jewels — absolutely cleaned up in the rap categories (best rap album, best rap song, best rap performance) prior to the telecast. Then, he got into an altercation that ended with him being led away in handcuffs. The story is still developing (Mike didn’t address it in a tweet this morning), but it’s hard to believe we’ve heard the last of it.
Billy Joel and Trevor Noah speak onstage during the 66th Grammy Awards.
John Shearer/Getty Images for The RIAA
hide caption
toggle caption
John Shearer/Getty Images for The RIAA
Billy Joel and Trevor Noah speak onstage during the 66th Grammy Awards.
John Shearer/Getty Images for The RIAA
8. Billy Joel performed his first new song in 17 years, then came back for an encore. Just a few days ago, Joel’s “Turn the Lights Back On” shocked the world — both because it was his first new song in 17 years and because the song itself was actually worth the interminable wait. The singer-songwriter performed the new track late in the Grammys telecast, then returned at the end to play one of his best-known bangers, 1989’s “The Downeaster ‘Alexa,’” which… [taps earpiece] okay, I’m being told the telecast-closing song was actually “You May Be Right,” which is considerably more rousing and thus appropriate for the occasion. Three and a half hours into an awards telecast, Billy Joel performing “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” would have been absolute performance art, and I kinda wish he’d done it just to be a rascal.
9. U2 offered us a look inside Las Vegas’ famed Sphere, and the world is still heaving from motion sickness. Actuarially speaking, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen the new movie Argylle, which is somehow both expensive-looking and cheap-looking, not to mention garish and loud and exhausting, with lots of long and exceedingly silly action set pieces. U2’s performance was kinda like Argylle, yet somehow even more abrasive and 20 times as disorienting, with endless swooping drone shots and… I don’t know, holograms and floating CGI heads and whatnot? I’m not even entirely sure, because I had to look away after a while. U2 is nothing if not maximalist, and maximalism can be fun, but the visuals made this a truly punishing ordeal.
Coco Jones poses in the press room with the Grammy for best R&B performance for “ICU” during the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Coco Jones poses in the press room with the Grammy for best R&B performance for “ICU” during the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
10. The Grammys mostly resisted the urge to humiliate themselves. In many if not most years, the Recording Academy will locate some far-flung opportunity to step on a rake in the most embarrassing possible way. Perhaps the head of the Academy will say something so catastrophically stupid we’re still writing about it six years later (see No. 2), or maybe they’ll give best new artist to an act later determined to have been lip-syncing, or maybe they’ll give the first-ever Grammy for heavy metal to Jethro Tull at the expense of Metallica, or maybe Macklemore will sweep the rap categories at the expense of Kendrick Lamar… you know the drill by now. But this year, thanks in large part to a pop-heavy but otherwise solid slate of nominees, Sunday was a night mostly free of embarrassment. Did host Trevor Noah address Ed Sheeran as “one of the greatest live performers of all time”? He did. But no one would be cruel enough to close out a summary of this year’s Grammys by pointing out the time Trevor Noah did, in fact, address Ed Sheeran as “one of the greatest live performers of all time.”
JasonMartin
Adin Ross Disrespecting Doechii …
Will Not Be Tolerated!!!
Published
TMZ.com
JasonMartin is putting his foot down after hearing Adin Ross call Doechii a “bitch” one too many times … the culture’s not going for it in 2026!!!
TMZ Hip Hop caught up with JM in L.A. this week, and he says Adin being aggressively addressed is vital to preventing outsiders of Black culture from toeing the line in the future.
Adin Ross is lying about Doechii and one of the biggest Twitter Accounts is behind it… pic.twitter.com/VoAwGJefyV
— Mike Tee (@ItsMikeTee) January 5, 2026
@ItsMikeTee
Adin maintains Doechii targeted him on her new track, “Girl, Get Up,” when she blasted people labeling her “an industry plant” … and blamed Complex magazine for helping fuel the fire.
Joe Budden, Glasses Malone, Wack 100, and Top Dawg Entertainment execs have all chimed in on Adin’s comments, and Jason says it’s bigger than internet tough talk … and won’t allow Adin to hide behind religion or freedom of speech to drag Black women.
Adin went on to collaborate with Tekashi 6ix9ine and Cuff Em on an anti-Lil Tjay and Doechii song, but has since said he’ll stay out of the beef; his chat doesn’t matter to him, and it’s not that deep to him.
TMZ.com
War mongering isn’t Jason’s only goal this year. He released 5 albums — “A Hit Dog Gon Holla,“ “I Told You So,“ “Mafia Cafe,“ “O.T.,“ and “A Lonely Winter” — to close out the 4th quarter and just may be in the “Snowfall” reboot with his buddy, Buddy!!!
A firefighter works as homes burn during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County, Calif., on Jan. 7, 2025.
Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
On New Year’s Eve 2024, journalist Jacob Soboroff was sitting around a campfire with a friend when he made an offhand comment that would come back to haunt him: The last thing he wanted to do in the new year, Soboroff said, was cover a story that would require donning a fire-safe yellow suit.
Just one week later, Soboroff was dressed in the yellow suit, reporting live from a street corner in Los Angeles as fire tore through the Pacific Palisades, the community where he was raised.
“This was a place that I could navigate with my eyes closed,” Soboroff says of the neighborhood. “Every hallmark of my childhood I was watching carbonize in front of me. … There were firefighters there and first responders and other journalists there, but it was an extremely lonely, isolating experience to be standing there as everything I knew burned down around me in real time.”
In his new book, Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, Soboroff offers a minute-by-minute account of the catastrophe, told through the voices of firefighters, evacuees, scientists and political leaders. He says covering the wildfires was the most important assignment he’s ever undertaken.
“The experience of doing this is something that I don’t wish on anybody, but in a way I wish everybody could experience,” he says. “It’s given me insane reverence for our colleagues in the local news community here, who, I think, definitionally were exercising a public service in the street-level journalism that they were doing and are still doing. … It was actually beautiful to watch because they are as much a first responder on a frontline as anybody else.”
Interview highlights
On the experience of reporting from the fires
You’re choking with the smoke. And I almost feel guilty describing it from my vantage point because the firefighters would say things to me like: “My eyeballs were burning. We were laying flat on our stomach in the middle of the concrete street because it was so hot, it was the only way that we could open the hoses full bore and try to save anything that we could.” …
I could feel the heat on the back of my neck as we stood in front of these houses that I remember as the houses that cars and people would line up in front of for the annual Fourth of July parade or the road race that we would run through town. Trees were on fire behind us — we were at risk of structures falling at any given minute. It was pretty surreal because this is a place I had spent so much time as a child and going back to as an adult. … I had no choice but to just open my mouth and say what I saw to the millions of people that were watching us around the country.
On undocumented immigrants being central to rebuilding the city
These types of massive both humanitarian and natural disasters give us X-ray vision for a time into sort of the fissures that are underneath the surface in our society. And Los Angeles, in addition to being one of the most unequal cities between the rich and the poor, has more undocumented people than virtually any other city in the United States of America. Governor Newsom knew that with the policies of the incoming administration, some of the very people that would be responsible for the cleanup and the rebuilding of Los Angeles may end up in the crosshairs of national immigration policy. And I think that that was an understatement. …
Pablo Alvarado in the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said to me that often the first people into a disaster — the second responders after the first — are the day laborers. They went to Florida after Hurricane Andrew, to New Orleans after Katrina, and they’d be ready to go in Los Angeles. And I went out and I cleaned up Altadena and Pasadena with some of them in real time.
And only months later did this wide-scale immigration enforcement campaign begin … on the streets of LA as sort of the Petri dish, the guinea pig for expanding this across the country. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that the parking lots of Home Depots, where workers [were] looking to get involved in the rebuilding of Los Angeles, has been ground zero for that enforcement campaign.
On efforts to rebuild
The pace is slow and it’s sort of a hopscotch of development. And I think for people who do come back, for people who can afford to come back, it’s going to be a long road ahead. You’re going to have half the houses on your street under construction for years to come. And for people that do inhabit those homes, it’s going to an isolating experience. But there’s an effort underway to rebuild. …
There’s also a lot of for-sale signs. And that’s the sad reality of this, is that there are people who, whether it’s that they can’t afford to come back … or that they just can’t stomach it, I think, sadly, a lot people are not going to be returning to their homes.
On what the Palisades and Altadena look like today
They both look like very big construction sites in a way. There are still some facades, some ruins of the more historic buildings in the Palisades. … But mostly it’s just empty lots. And in Altadena, the same thing. If you drive by the hardware store, the outside is still there. But it’s a patchwork of empty lots. Homes now under construction. And lots and lots of workers. … There are still a handful of people who are living in both the Palisades and in Altadena, but for the most part, these are communities where you’ve got workers going in during the day and coming out at night. …
We have designed this community to be one that’s in the crosshairs of a fire just like the one we experienced and that we will certainly, certainly experience again, because nobody’s packing it up and leaving Los Angeles. People may not return to their communities after they’ve lost their homes, but the ship has sailed on living in the wildland urban interface in the second largest city in the country.
On seeing this story, personally, as his “most important assignment”
Jacob Soboroff is a correspondent for MS NOW, formerly MSNBC.
Jason Frank Rothenberg/HarperCollins
hide caption
toggle caption
Jason Frank Rothenberg/HarperCollins
I don’t think I realized at the time how badly I needed the connections that I made in the wake of the fire, both with the people who have lost homes and the firefighters, first responders who were out there, but also honestly with my own family, my immediate family, my wife and my kids, my mom and my dad and my siblings and myself. I think that this was a really hard year in LA, and I think in the wake of the fire, I was experiencing some level of despair as well. Then the ICE raids happened here and sort of turned our city upside down. And this book for me was just this amazing cathartic blessing of an opportunity to find community with people I don’t think I ever would have otherwise spent time with, and to reconnect with people who I hadn’t seen or heard from in forever.
Anna Bauman and Nico Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Pelosi heir-apparent calls Trump’s Venezuela move a ‘lawless coup,’ urges impeachment, slams Netanyahu
Common pain relievers may raise heart disease and stroke risk, doctors warn
Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa open to fresh start elsewhere after disappointing season: ‘That would be dope’
How to send free digital invitations on iPhone
Commentary: A leading roboticist punctures the hype about self-driving cars, AI chatbots and humanoid robots
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Pelosi heir-apparent calls Trump’s Venezuela move a ‘lawless coup,’ urges impeachment, slams Netanyahu
EU Commission examines childlike sexual images created by Musk’s AI
Lawmakers split over Maduro’s seizure. And, CDC cuts childhood vaccine schedule
Federal officials to halt more than $10B in funding to 5 states over non-citizen benefit concerns: report
US critics and allies condemn Maduro’s abduction at UN Security Council
-
World1 week agoHamas builds new terror regime in Gaza, recruiting teens amid problematic election
-
Indianapolis, IN1 week agoIndianapolis Colts playoffs: Updated elimination scenario, AFC standings, playoff picture for Week 17
-
News1 week agoFor those who help the poor, 2025 goes down as a year of chaos
-
World1 week agoPodcast: The 2025 EU-US relationship explained simply
-
Business1 week agoInstacart ends AI pricing test that charged shoppers different prices for the same items
-
Business1 week agoApple, Google and others tell some foreign employees to avoid traveling out of the country
-
Politics1 week ago‘Unlucky’ Honduran woman arrested after allegedly running red light and crashing into ICE vehicle
-
Technology1 week agoChatGPT’s GPT-5.2 is here, and it feels rushed