Frank Sinatra, Carrie Underwood, Aretha Franklin Mark 2008's Grammy Awards

This year marked the 50^th Anniversary of the Grammy Awards. It was aired on CBS. To kick it all off, the show started out with Old Blues Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, and old video footage of him presenting at a show from years past. I liked the way they had Alicia Keys sing a song with him as the show opener.

Other performances from the show included Carrie Underwood singing "Before He Cheats" as she walked down a set of stairs with dancers and back-up singers making noise in the style of "Stomp." Multi Grammy winner Kayne West came out onstage with a lit up vest and sunglasses. He sang a song dedicated to his recently departed mom. He continued to wear this outfit for the rest of the night as he went up to accept his awards as well. I though his stage props were pretty cool. His DJ's could not be seen, only their silhouettes that were trimmed in red lights. The duet of Tina Turner and Beyonce was great. Tine looked in shape and as good as ever.

Aretha Franklin performed gospel song Never Gonna Break My Faith with a full choir behind her. She didn't look so good, looking very obese and uncomfortable. The cast of Across the Universe, performed a tribute to The Beatles, along with performers from Cirque de Soleil, singing a mixture of some of the Beatles greatest hits. They did a wonderful job. Fergie also performed along side John Legend. Rhianna performed her radio hit "Umbrella" sporting a much shorter hairdo as well. Alicia Keys also performed her song "No One" with John Mayer. Morris Day and Time performed a song. Brad Paisley also performed, singing his hit Ticks.

During Kayne's acceptance speech for one award, the show was trying to get him to wrap his speech up by playing music. He made a couple references to it and how he didn't like it. When he was thanking his mom in his speech he said "it'd be in good taste to stop the music" and respectfully, the show did.

Presenters included "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" singer Cindi Lauper along with Miley Cyrus. Kid Rock came out on and sang The Old Black Magic with Keely Smith and then they presented the Best Rock Album to the Foo Fighters. In my opinion, they were the only real rock artist up for nomination other than American Idol graduate Daughtry. Prince also presented an award for Best Female R&B Performance. 25 time Grammy winner Stevie Wonder was also introduced Alica Keys to the stage to perform. Ringo Star presented a country award.

The wonderful Cher was also there. Cuba Gooding Jr. presented Amy Winehouse via satellite performance. Tony Bennet was also a presenter for an award he once one; Record of the year. This year the Grammy went to Amy Winehouse. Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis performed a few songs, putting on quite a performance. Usher and Quincy Jones presented Album of the year, the final award of the show, to Herbie Handcock.

I think there were better nominees to win the record of the year, but the vote went to Winehouse. Justin Timberlake seemed to have multiple hits including the nominated song for this category What Goes Around...Comes Around and he is more of an established artist. He did win Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for this song though.

A complete list of winners can be found at the Grammys official website.

Overall, this year's Grammys were ok. I think there was too must anticipation leading up to the performance by Amy Winehouse. It makes me wonder if her whole rehab stint was all part of a publicity act just to get on shows such as the Grammys. It was a good performance though. As always, there were many awards announced throughout the show that had already been awarded and not shown on air. That would make the show even longer than the 3 ½ hours that it takes to air. There was a great variety of performances. I like how they coupled up artist from different genres or eras to perform together. It was a nice touch.