Grammys

Bruce Springsteen

With all his trademark energy intact and backed with a massive string section, the Boss — who lost his longtime collaborator Clarence Clemons last year – kicked off the evening with a rousing version of “We Take Care of Our Own.” It was soulful, spirited and just the right touch of mournful.

LL Cool J

Admitting that “There is no way around this — we had a death in our family,” the night’s host then announced “the only thing right is to begin with a prayer … for our fallen sister.” Depending on your philosophic perspective, watching the audience solemnly bow its collective head while Cool James invoked our “heavenly father” was either a moving tribute or a sudden reminder of why having an atheist like Ricky Gervais host awards shows is a cool idea. But when he cut to clip of Whitney blowing the roof off with a live performance of “I Will Always Love You” at the Grammys a generation ago, it set a bar for vocal performance that would be damn near impossible to match for the rest of the night.

Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt

Honoring the late, great Etta James, two knockout performers of different eras and genres gave a stripped-down version of “Sunday Kind of Love.” It was one of the few pairings of the night that worked, a stunning moment of sincerity and finesse in an evening that often veered heavily to schmaltz.

Chris Brown

It’s not that we can expect the music industry to ignore chart-topping, domestic-abusing, frequently terrible Chris Brown. He’s had a huge year, and on Sunday’s broadcast, he even managed to pick up a Grammy. But aside from his historic awfulness, there’s another reason to ponder whether it was really necessary to subject America to two separate performances. Decked out in his preppy “I’m not dangerous, ladies!” varsity jacket, he jumped around lip-syncing “Turn Up the Music” and “Beautiful People” with a posse of bat-winged, masked performers in a performance apparently inspired by the old video game Q*Bert early in the night, then came back near the end for a dead-behind-the-eyes “tribute to dance.” At least he managed to prove that he doesn’t need his abusive record to be reviled; feel free to shun him just because he sucks.

Jennifer Hudson

It took the powerhouse Jennifer Hudson — who two years ago performed Houston’s most successful smash for the woman herself at the BET Awards — to take “I Will Always Love You” back from the place of power ballad clichés where it’s lived the last two decades and make it ache like new. No big crescendo, no sappy orchestration, just a clearly emotional Hudson belting her heart out. Beautiful.

Foo Fighters

In an intense performance outside the Staples Center for the regular folk, Dave Grohl and company – a gang whose own experience of tragedy was brought home by that audience member thrashing around in a Nirvana shirt — howled through a fiery rendition of their “never wanna die” anthem “Walk.” Later, picking up the Grammy for best rock performance, Grohl admitted, “We made this one in my garage with some microphones and a tape machine,” eloquently pleaded for “the human element of music” and promised, “It’s not about being perfect.” It was a shining example of old-school authenticity, only slightly undercut by the appearance, immediately after, of Ryan Seacrest.

Glen Campbell

Lifetime-achievement award winner Campbell, who last year announced he was facing Alzheimer’s and would release a final album and do one last tour, is not going gently into his disease. After the Band Perry shouted uncomprehendingly through “Gentle On My Mind” and Blake Shelton did a serviceable “Southern Nights,” it was Campbell himself who rocked the house. Looking undeniably unwell but in remarkably stronger voice than the likes of fellow Grammy performers Carrie Underwood or Paul McCartney, he staunchly belted out “Rhinestone Cowboy,” enthusiastically coaxing the entire audience to sing along. It was by the far the greatest exhibition of bad-ass, rock ‘n’ roll indominability of the night.

Katy Perry

Aw, remember when Katy Perry did the Grammys gently swaying in a trapeze swing, showing off home movies from her wedding? Sure you do; it was last year. Post-Russell Brand divorce Katy seems to have decided to go for a different vibe. Performing her new song “Part of Me,” she was all about shattering glass, engulfing ice effigies of men in flames, and declaring, “You can keep the diamond ring, in fact, you can keep everything.” Katy, you blue-haired, pissed-off little minx, you know what? I believe you.

Nicki Minaj

The Catholic Church hasn’t taken this much of a beating since Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” era. In a performance of “Roman Holiday” that topped even Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,” Minaj went through a confession gone wrong, an exorcism, and wound up surrounded by dancing monks getting groped by hot leather babes – all while “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” took on a whole new meaning. Did we mention she levitated? It was the closest the Grammys has ever come to turning into a Ken Russell movie.

Adele

Taking the stage after vocal surgery in November, the night’s biggest winner was clearly not in as forceful voice as in her Royal Albert Hall performance of last year. But she was so clearly enjoying her triumphant night of multiple wins, pointing at herself while snarling, “You could have had this all,” she personified bittersweet awesomeness. When the audience thundered to its feet, Adele’s mastery of simultaneous heartbreak and victory was not just in powerful evidence, it was conspicuously infectious. And when, later, she tearfully picked up the final award of the night for album of the year, she copped both to an inspiring “rubbish relationship” and to fending off “oh my God, snot.” And that is whyyyyyyyy we will always love youuuuuuu, Adele.

Lately, however, it seems we’ve reached a new level of openness about a recreational — and, in most places and circumstances, illegal — indulgence that lots of people enjoy regularly. Last October, Zach Galifianakis sparked controversy when he lit up a suspicious-looking funny cigarette on Bill Maher’s show to make a point about California’s soon-to-be-doomed, marijuana-tolerant Proposition 19. Then in January, Roseanne Barr declared in her new memoir that “Pot is the only drug that should be legal. In fact, it should be mandatory.”

But we must really be in high stoner season now. Just last week Kevin Smith candidly praised his “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” star Seth Rogen to MTV, saying, “I got so much from him. He reenergized me in a weird way. I became a stoner because of Seth Rogen.” Smith, whose recent weight loss would seem to disprove the popular notion of plus-size potheads, seemed eager to dispel another common perception about them as well, describing Rogen as a “constantly writing [and] productive … functioning stoner” full of “brilliant ideas.”  He further stated that, “The moment I start smoking, I start working.”

As if to lend support to Smith’s testimonial on the productivity-boosting power of pot, on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, the overachieving Lady Gaga stated plainly to Anderson Cooper: “I smoke a lot of pot when I write music. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for ’60 Minutes.’ I drink a lot of whiskey and I smoke weed when I write.” She added, “I don’t do it a lot because it’s not good for my voice.” Her admission was followed by an inevitable slew of online comments regarding the colorful, not-afraid-to-wear-a-steak-or-two entertainer’s obviously weed-muddled brain.  “I can tell, Gaga!” wrote a commenter on CNN, while another on PopEater huffed, “Gee who would have guessed that this walking freak show uses drugs?” Dude, if everybody who smoked pot acted like Gaga, a whole lot more people would be making entrances in giant eggs.

Gaga’s Sunday evening frankness was at once casual and revelatory, a theme that continued into the night during the Grammys. First, David Letterman cracked about how “Willie Nelson provided the Grammy show snacks,” and later, “functioning stoner” Seth Rogen himself joking before presenting an award that “I was backstage getting high with Miley Cyrus.” (Cyrus was famously caught on video enjoying some salvia last autumn.)

We turned a corner culturally when, 14 years after Bill Clinton blustered that he tried marijuana in England but “didn’t like it” and “didn’t inhale,” Barack Obama unrepentantly duh-ed, “I inhaled frequently. That was the point.” But the willingness of public figures to cop not only to having smoked pot but to still be doing it on a regular basis has in recent months gained a new kind of traction, fueled no doubt in part by challenges to the drug laws, loosening of restrictions on medical marijuana,  and a growing body of research on its medicinal effectiveness.

And there remains something ridiculous about not being able to open a magazine or turn on a television without being bombarded with ads for alcohol and prescription drugs, while the government continues to wage a “drug war” on something you can grow in your yard. And consider the fact that the much-joked-about Willie Nelson, age 77, was arrested last November for possession, and a report issued just last week showed that “more people were arrested last year in New York City on charges of marijuana possession than during the entire 19-year period from 1978 to 1996,” a rate of about 140 arrests a day. Thanks, Mayor Bloomberg, a man who’s stated of his own pot smoking that “You bet I did, and I enjoyed it.” I’d hate my city tax dollars to go toward improving the public school system or anything. 

While Gaga or Rogen or Smith may believe their high profiles make them relatively low risk for backlash when they discuss their own pot smoking, their admissions nevertheless come with a raft of still deeply embedded cultural taboos — and potential legal retribution. Maybe speaking up and even joking about their marijuana use won’t effect a sea change in the drug laws. But their candor might at least open the door for others to come out of the closet on the subject too, and eliminate some of the stigma and misconceptions about pot smokers. It’s not all “Dark Side of the Moon” and Ben & Jerrys binges, you Internet scolds and DEA officials, you. As with many other things in life, it’s silly to have so much secrecy and denial attached to something so many people do. As Gaga explained Sunday night, it’s not about getting high; it’s just about elevating the conversation. “I don’t want to encourage kids to do drugs,” she said. “But what artists do wrong is they lie, and I don’t lie.” And you don’t have to be an artist to appreciate someone being refreshingly blunt.