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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.”
Author Julia Elliott won for her short story collection Hellions.
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Forrest Clonts/Tin House
Writer Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions. The award honors work by women and nonbinary authors in the U.S. and Canada.
Elliott, who also authored the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch and the short story collection The Wilds, is known for blending elements of Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fairy tale. Hellions, published in 2025, includes stories set against backdrops like a plague-stricken medieval convent, a feminist art colony, and small Southern towns.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls,” wrote the prize jury in a statement. “Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control.”
The prize, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, awards $150,000 to one winner each year. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and nonbinary authors are eligible.
This year’s finalists included Quiara Alegría Hudes (The White Hot), Lee Lai (Cannon), Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief), and Sonya Walger (Lion). They will each receive $12,500.
The Carol Shields Prize went to writer Canisia Lubrin in 2025.
You can listen to actor Donna Lynne Champlin read Elliott’s story “Hellion” on the Death, Sex & Money podcast here.
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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