Taylor Swift made history on Monday as the first woman to win the top Grammy twice, but rapper Kendrick Lamar took home five awards and delivered an electrifying, politically charged performance that
Taylor Swift made history on Monday as the first woman to win the top Grammy twice, but rapper Kendrick Lamar took home five awards and delivered an electrifying, politically charged performance that rocked the gala.
The top prizes on the music industry’s biggest night mainly went to mainstream chart-toppers, with Swift taking the Album of the Year prize for 1989 and the retro party anthem Uptown Funk winning Record of the Year.
Swift won three prizes on the night, all for work off 1989 which was one of the bestselling US albums of the past decade. The 26-year-old spoke to her legions of girl fans as she accepted her second Album of the Year award. “I want to say to all the young women out there — there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame,” Swift said.
“But if you just focus on the work and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you are going, you will look around, and you will know that it was you and the people who love you who put you there,” she said. While Swift won the top award, the most Grammys went to Lamar, whose album To Pimp a Butterfly offered an innovative meditation on race relations with infusions of jazz and spoken word.
Lamar, whose song Alrig-ht has become an unofficial anthem for protesters against police abuse, took five awards out of 11 nominations.
Record of the Year went to Uptown Funk, a dance track with echoes of early Prince by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. English singer and guitarist Ed Sheeran won for Song of the Year, which recognises songwriting whereas Record of the Year looks at overall singles, for Thinking Out Loud —- a bare love ballad that has become a favourite at weddings. Meghan Trainor, 22, won another key award, Best New Artist, after the breakthrough success of All About That Bass, her tongue-in-cheek doo wop take on weight struggles and self-acceptance. Trai-nor broke down in tears as she accepted the award. Alabama Shakes, the bluesy indie rock band defined by Brittany Howard’s thunderous voice, won three Gram-mys — Best Alternative Music Album, Rock Song and Rock Performance.
The Grammys also paid tribute to a number of artists who recently died, chief among them the rock icon David Bowie. Lady Gaga appeared to transform on stage into Bowie, her face merging into his thunderbolt logo, against a three-dimensional backdrop of space imagery befitting the Starman. She sang a medley of hits, including Space Oddity, Changes and Let’s Dance to guitar by Nile Rodgers of Chic fame.
