It’s Taylor Swift’s world, and she just allows us to live in it.
After weeks where she attracted endless attention for her football star boyfriend and a mystifying right-wing campaign against her, the Grammy Awards put the focus squarely back on her art. “Midnights” earned Swift her fourth career Grammy for album of the year on Sunday, an achievement no one can match.
It breaks a tie with Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, who each won the honor three times.
“For me, the award is the work,” she said. “All I want to do is keep doing it.”
And she will (more on that later). Swift was the last example of an action-packed show where women earned the biggest honors and had the majority of the most memorable performances. Miley Cyrus powerfully belted “Flowers, which won record of the year. Billie Eilish’s ballad from “Barbie,” “What Was I Made For?” was song of the year for her and co-writer Finneas O’Connell, her brother. Singer-songwriter Victoria Monét is best new artist.
There were so many riches that rock supergroup boygenius, with Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, won three Grammys and didn’t even make it onto the CBS portion of the show.
Making the best pop vocal solo performance the televised show’s first award — where all five nominees were women — was a savvy hint to what was coming.
TRACY’S TURN
Bringing the reclusive Tracy Chapman on to duet with country singer Luke Combs, who had a massive hit covering her “Fast Car” this past summer, was spine-tingling. In a pre-taped segment leading into it, Combs eloquently described what the song meant to him growing up. Clearly moved, Chapman’s eyes glistened when the crowd roared as she played the 1988 song’s unforgettable guitar riff. She’s kept to the background as Combs brought the song to a new…
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