The Grammy Nominations Concert Live on CBS: A Review

Here was a different way to kick off the Grammy Award nominations for 2011 by showcasing a live concert Wednesday night at Club Nokia. CBS broadcasted the event as the 53^rd Grammy Awards will be on CBS Sunday, February 13. LL Cool J, one of the stars of "NCIS: Los Angeles", was the host of the event.

Opening the concert was Katy Perry with performances throughout the hour-long live telecast by Miranda Lambert, Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, Train and B.o.B. In between the musical performances they announced the nominees for a number of the major categories including Best New Artist and Record of the Year.

Opening Performance and Song of the Year Nominations

Katy Perry sang one of her big hits of the summer "California Gurls" in a '50s style silvery dress appropriate enough for Christmas. Her back-up singers and dancers joined in the holiday cheer with their gold or white ensembles.

Bruno Mars gave a passionate acoustic performance of "Just the Way You Are" without all the glitter of Perry's flashy number. David Grohl and Selena Gomez were the first to announce the nominations for Song of the Year: (Even though this honors only songwriters I'll simply list the artists.)

Beg Borrow or Steal (Artist - Ray LaMontagne and The Pariah Dogs)
F*** You (Artist - Cee Lo Green)
The House That Built Me (Artist - Miranda Lambert)
Love the Way You Lie (Artist - Eminem featuring Rihanna)
Need You Know (Artist - Lady Antebellum)

It was interesting how they edited the song title by Cee Lo Green on network television.

Train's "Hey Soul Sister", Best New Artist and Miranda Lambert

Of course Train would sing their biggest hit ever, "Hey Soul Sister" to entertain the crowd while most are waiting for one of the biggest musical guests of the evening to appear. In the meantime they showed fascinating clips of past winners who have won the Grammy for Best New Artist. The nominees are:

Justin Bieber
Drake
Florence and the Machine
Mumford & Sons
Esperanza Spalding

I'd love to see a jazz artist win in this category for a change so I'm going with Esperanza Saplding. It would also be nice to see Florence and the Machine win too. Shortly after the announcement of the Best New Artist nominees LL Cool J interviewed Justin Bieber via satellite from London. Beiber has to be one of the most inarticulate celebrities I have ever seen. He truly cannot express himself verbally very well. I thought LL Cool J did a great job otherwise in a poor situation.

I'm not a big country music fan, but I definitely appreciated Miranda Lambert's sincere and realistic performance that was 100% country music without the sugary pop music coating of other country stars.

Stevie Wonder with Album of the Year and B.o.B feat. Bruno Mars

For the Album of the Year nominee announcements Stevie Wonder had the honors. While he was talking about past winners he happened to slip in his own name. It was cute when he realized that. Here are the nominees and the artists: (This category also honors the producers and engineers.)

The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
Recovery - Eminem
Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
The Fame Monster - Lady Gaga
Teenage Dream - Katy Perry

Bruno Mars came back to perform with B.o.B singing their latest hit.

Best Female Country Vocal Performance, Record of the Year and Closing with B.o.B

Late night talk show host Craig Ferguson announced the nominees for this country music category:

Jewel
Miranda Lambert
LeAnn Rimes
Carries Underwood
Gretchen Wilson

LL Cool J joined in with Craig Ferguson to make the big announcement for Record of the Year. Before that, LL Cool J congratulated Craig for his nomination in the Spoken Recording category of Best Spoken Word Album. The nominees for Record of the Year go out to artist, producer, engineers, mixers and other key personnel:

Nothin' on You - B.o.B featuring Bruno Mars
Love the Way You Lie - Enimen featuring Rihanna
F*** You - Cee Lo Green
Empire State of Mind - Jay-Z and Alicia Keys
Need You Now - Lady Antebellum

B.o.B closed out the live telecast. For an exhaustive list of all 109 categories you can go to the nominee page at Grammy.com. Eminem, Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga got the most nominations. Eminem lead the way with a total of 10 nominations. The 53rd Grammy Awards are on February 13, 2011 on CBS.

SOURCES:

The Grammy Nominations Concert, CBS

Nominees, Grammy.com

Monica Herrera, "Enimen, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga Lead Grammy Nominations", Billboard.com

Grammy Award, Wikipedia