My Thoughts on the 57th Grammy Awards

The 57th Grammy Awards were held last night at the Los Angeles Staples Center. And once again, I was unable to watch the ceremony live, due in large part to my cable provider pulling a fast one on us by deciding not to air it as promised. Still, I managed to salvage an otherwise sleepless night by following the proceedings on Twitter and several live blogs. For the fourth time in a row, the awards were hosted by LL Cool J. The ceremony was kicked into gear by a performance from aging rockers, AC/DC. Other performers ranged from pop stars Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Madonna, to blue-eyed crooners Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran.

As far as the actual awards went, the rap categories were shared between Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, the former winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration and Best Rap Album for The Monster and The Marshall Matters LP 2 respectively, while the latter took home Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance for "i." Punk rockers Paramore took home the award for Best Rock Song for their hit, Ain't It Fun, while Best Rock Album went to the critically-acclaimed Morning Phase by Beck. Best Dance Recording went to Clean Bandit and Jess Glynne for their song, Rather Be, while Aphex Twin won Best Dance/Electronic Album for Syro.

The evening's big winner was of course Sam Smith, who took home four out of the six awards he had been vying for. This included Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album for In The Lonely Hour, then Song of the Year and Record of the Year for Stay With Me. He didn't quite clean up the ceremony like fellow Brit Adele did in 2012, losing the Album of the Year award to Beck's Morning Phase in a surprising turn of events. But he'd promised in an interview to hand over that particular award to Beyonce, for what he considered a more deserving album, if he'd somehow managed to win, so I guess he shouldn't be mourning the loss of that award.

The ceremony was brought to an end by a performance of Glory by John Legend and Common, taken from the motion picture soundtrack to the highly-acclaimed biopic, Selma, a song which is incidentally vying for a Best Original Song award at the 87th Academy Awards later this month.

EDIT: Now that I have taken the time to watch the full ceremony, I just have to add that the part where Kanye West feigns rushing onto the stage in angry protest, after Beyonce loses Album of the Year to Beck, is quite possibly the funniest thing I have seen on television all year. Classic.