Award show season is a candy store of glamour and star bursts for some. For others, it’s an underwhelming exercise, especially if those judgments are based on the many listless awards shows that have aired since the pandemic.
The Grammys are an exception, in no small part due to the pep Trevor Noah brought as its host. Instead of pretending to be a snickering outsider cracking risqué jokes at the stars’ expense, Noah is a fan — that guy who’s as excited as the people watching at home, and occasionally as starstruck, even though he walked among them.
And that’s fine, especially during Sunday’s 67th annual Grammy Awards and its fifth go-round with Noah as the Grammys emcee. He lent the show the same perkiness that buoyed his previous efforts, albeit with an appropriation addition of earnestness. Sunday’s party at the Crypto.com Arena wasn’t a typical self-congratulatory exercise. It doubled as an uplifting tribute to a suffering city.
Even a decent award show can suffer from stilted writing.
“As usual we are coming to you live from Los Angeles, but what is unusual are our circumstances this evening,” Noah said in his opener. “Just a few weeks ago, we weren’t sure . . . that this show would even happen. I mean, you don’t need me to tell you this, but this city has been through one of the largest natural disasters in American history.”
That placed Noah in a challenging position – he had to keep his presence light, spirits lifted and the show on message. In some respects, that wasn’t difficult to do given the star power at his disposal. 2024 was a banner year for pop music and artistic swings. Noah called out several of them in his monologue, including Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas and Chappell Roan.
“It was here in Los Angeles that Stevie Wonder wrote and recorded arguably the greatest album of all time: ‘Songs in the Key of Life,’” he said. “And L.A. was the city where Snoop first mixed gin and juice, and hip-hop has never been the same.”
Even a decent award show can suffer from stilted writing.
But the true Hollywood flair telegraphed through one of the night’s biggest wins, as L.A. hometown hero Kendrick Lamar walked away with five Grammys for “Not Like Us,” including record of the year and song of the year. That’s five Grammys for a diss track about a rival, Drake.
Lamar’s success was outdone (only slightly, some would say) by Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” winning album of the year at long last, becoming the first Black woman to win the top award in the 21st century and only the fourth in Grammys history after Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston and Lauryn Hill.
“Cowboy Carter” also won best country album, a worthy pickup after being completely snubbed by the Country Music Association’s awards, and overcame Taylor Swift’s dominance in the category. What’s fun about this is that for a time nobody was sure if Beyoncé or any of the other Carters would show up. Eventually, they did – just in time for Queen Bey to snatch her first statue of the night.
Noah, who was born in South Africa, knows something about the immigrant experience and could have been strategic and nuanced in addressing the mass deportation threats.
With all of this in play, not to mention a flood of electric live performances and an extraordinary tribute to Quincy Jones, unobtrusiveness would be the safe move for a host in Noah’s position. Nobody was tuning in for him – not when performances by Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Doechii (who became the third woman ever to win the best rap album Grammy) were promised, to say nothing of the industry legends also attending.
But the timing of these Grammys is extraordinary for reasons apart from the devastating fires. This is the first major awards telecast of Donald Trump’s second presidency, and this administration’s opening act has been marked by shocking attacks on immigrants, transgender people, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
You had to expect popular musicians, including artists who have generated protest anthems and spoken for the marginalized, to speak loudly about some of those issues.
Noah, who was born in South Africa, knows something about the immigrant experience and could have been strategic and nuanced in addressing the mass deportation threats. Instead, he loosed a clunky rimshot, explaining to newcomers that the Grammy honors the best in music as voted on by the 13,000 members of the Recording Academy, “and 20 million illegal immigrants!”
Doechii, who was captured in the frame as Noah riffed, did not look amused.
This take wasn’t much improved when Noah made it personal: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, there’s been a few changes in Washington. I’m going to enjoy tonight, because this may be the last time I get to host anything in this country.”
Trevor Noah at the 67th GRAMMY Awards held at the Crypto.com Arena on February 2, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)
Others did better.
“This is not the time to shut down the diversity of voices we’ve seen on this stage,” declared Alicia Keys as she accepted Dr. Dre’s Global Impact Award. “DEI is not a threat, it’s a gift. And the more voices, the more powerful the sound. When destructive forces try to burn us down, we rise from the ashes like a phoenix, and as you see tonight, music is the unstoppable language that connects us all.”
“I just want to say tonight that trans people are not invisible,” said Lady Gaga as she and Bruno Mars accepted the Grammy for best pop duo/group performance for “Die with a Smile.” “Trans people deserve love. The queer community deserves to be lifted up.”
Before that, Chappell Roan marked her best new artist win to keep a promise to herself: “I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists.”
The singer went on to recall a low point early in her career when the label that signed her as a teenager dropped her in 2020, leaving her jobless and without health insurance during the pandemic. “If my label had prioritized it, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to,” she said, winding up her speech with, “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
All of these were potent declarations welcomed with hearty applause, as expected. But if you’re the bridge between someone taking a political stand and turning the audience’s attention to wildfire relief, I feel for you.
Noah wasn’t always up to that task, as we saw in the moments following Roan’s wake-up call when he walked onstage looking like he had just stared into the sun.
“Man. I don’t even know what to say,” he began, and proved that to be true by continuing to speak. “That’s amazing. And in that spirit, I just want to remind everybody that tonight isn’t just about getting awards. It’s also about giving back. I love what Chappell said there. It was absolutely beautiful…” A few sentences later we were thrown into shock by footage of Los Angeles looking like the End of Days.
But then, Noah was often awestruck, expressing some flavor of “That’s amazing” or freestyling about a “powerful” message.
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Did this detract from the Grammys, described by Noah as “what Valentine’s Day is to romance, and Father’s Day is to Nick Cannon,” from being wildly colorful and satisfying? Hardly.
The producers fully committed this telecast as a dedication to the city and its role in music’s past and present, using the attention it would draw to fundraise for MusiCares Fire Relief. But it also brought the heart and soul of L.A. to the evening, kicking off with Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes performing born-Angeleno Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” backed by a supergroup consisting of John Legend, Brittany Howard, Sheryl Crow, St. Vincent, and Brad Paisley.
Later, Mars and Lady Gaga cosplayed a version of “California Dreamin’,” with Stefani Germanotta donning a crocheted cap and prairie dress and going overboard with a kooky psychedelic lean.
Leading off the live acts was Carpenter goofing her way through a mash-up of “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” that merged Hollywood glamour with jazz cabaret and slapstick, as she pretended to stumble through dropped props and wardrobe malfunctions. Which Noah found, you guessed, “amazing.” “And funny, which I didn’t appreciate,” he added. “You do funny too, Sabrina? Really? You just gonna take my job like that?”
Probably not any time soon, since the reason the shows work is the emphasis on the music driving the theatrics. Maybe if Noah is asked to host again he’ll step up approach. But after a challenging 2024 and the draining year that was January, his version of par was the stabilizing force grounding the technicolor defiance vibrating the air around him.
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