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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.”
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
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1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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