Music Awards

The Best Tweets and Photos From Last Night's Grammy Awards

Last night, during the 55th Grammy Awards, we trudged through the bile and self-loating of angry would-be comedians and critics who took to Twitter to tell Jack White he looks like Edward Scissorhands and Johnny Depp he looks like the butt baby of Jack Sparrow and Steve Tyler and Adele she was dress ... More >>

MTV's Video Music Awards Enters The Post-Music-Video Era

Help Protect The Glammy Awards From A Legal Threat!

For 14 years, the Glammy Awards have been Cherry Jubilee's fabulous annual tribute to the best in LGBT nightlife, including drag queens, bartenders, gogo dancers, hosts, and bars. Well, Cherry tells me that this local, enjoyable, non-toxic event is riling up the Grammy Awards to the point of legal ... More >>

NEVER SAY NEVER

Esperanza Spalding and friends 
come to Webster Hall

SPANISH FLY

The Flamenco and Beyond Fest 
brings together Spain's finest

Adele And M.I.A. Bring Back The Middle Finger!

​At the Super Bowl Half Time show, famously enough, M.I.A. flipped the bird and uttered an "expletive," unbeknownst to star Madonna, who later expressed dismay that such a juvenile act disrupted the feeling of love and peace that had taken over the stadium. This from the woman who said "Fuck" ... More >>

Adele Brings Snot Out Of The Closet

Adele's speech as she was presented with the Grammy for Album of the Year last night was adorable, fun, real, honest, and mucousy. The singer extraordinaire held up her statuette and exulted, "Mom, girl did good!"

Who Will Win At The Grammys?

Tonight's the running of the 54th annual Grammys, and for the past week Sound of the City has been running the odds on various categories. Below, a list of all the predictions made by our writers this week. (Spoiler: Adele (above) pops up a lot!) Feel free to clip and save, and fill in the (many) ga ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2012 Grammys: Tributes, Tribulations, Skrillex, And The Return Of Adele

via Cats Who Look Like SkrillexWill this cat win Best New Artist?​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 54th Annual Grammys, coming to you live from a couch in Astoria. There are quite a few questions lurking around tonight's ceremony. Will Adele sweep the three major categories in wh ... More >>

It's Adele vs. Gaga At The Grammys Sunday

And that's good because it'll take some of the heat off Gaga vs. Madonna. But who do you think will win the Grammy for Album of the Year?

Oddsmaking: Should The Grammys Just Give The Album Of The Year Award To Adele Now?

For the last twenty years, the award for Album of the Year, the biggest Grammy honor of them all, has tended to go to two types of people: young women and old men. Female solo artists under 30 (Lauryn Hill, Taylor Swift) and male veterans over 40 (Tony Bennett, U2) have dominated the category for tw ... More >>

So Beautiful? So What: Why The Grammys Shoved Paul Simon Aside And Embraced Skrillex

A good while back, I was envisioning a Grammy-night dogfight between what, at that point, were my two favorite albums of 2011: Lady Gaga's Born This Way and Paul Simon's So Beautiful or So What. (Both ended up on my Pazz & Jop ballot.)I mentioned this to Maura and she said, "No. Adele." Up went my v ... More >>

Skrillex Gets Deep on the Cusp of the Grammys

Drop it like a rock

Oddsmaking: Will Adele Go "Rolling" Over Her Song Of The Year Competition?

The Grammys have a determinedly behind-the-times history, and Song of the Year is one of the ceremony's most reliably old-fashioned categories. It's given to the songwriter—even though what constitutes a "song" today is a lot different than when the Grammys began in 1959, back when sheet music ... More >>

TEARDROPS 
ON HIS GUITAR

Glen Campbell says goodbye to NYC

The Video Music Awards' Nominations Play To The Internet (Again)

​Last night MTV announced the nominees for this year's installment of their annual pseudo-event extravaganza, the 2011 Video Music Awards, and once again, the nominees for Video Of The Year have three pop picks ("Rolling In The Deep," "Firework," "Grenade"), one sop to the olds in the crowd wh ... More >>

Latin Jazz Heavyweights Protest Grammy Snub

​The scene outside the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium Monday night suggested a Latin jazz celebration; pianist Eddie Palmieri, pianist/bandleader Larry Harlow, drummer Bobby Sanabria, trombonist Chris Washburne, and trumpeter Brian Lynch milled about. But this wasn't a concert, no ... More >>

The Great Grammy Cull: RIP, Best Hawaiian Music Album

​This morning NARAS--the outfit responsible for putting on the Grammy Awards every year--announced that next year, the awards show would have a leaner, tougher look, bringing the total number of categories down to 78 (from 109) and forcing each category to justify its existence by having 40 po ... More >>

'Jeff Beck's Rock & Roll Party with Imelda May & Her Band'

George Michael CD Giveaway!

​In 1987, George Michael won the Grammy for Album of the Year for Faith, his shimmery record bursting with hit songs like the title track, "I Want Your Sex," "Father Figure," and more. Well, Faith has been gussied up and reissued by Epic/Legacy, and I have five glorious copies of it to hand o ... More >>

Bruno Mars

Fantasia

Stream Deadmau5's Set At Provocateur Last Night

​Fresh off his stint DJing the MTV Video Music Awards (netting him invaluable 10-second bursts of airtime!), electro-house misfit Deadmau5 dropped by swank West Side club Provocateur last night ("It is rumored that entry will be like getting into Fort Knox") and apparently UStreamed his entire ... More >>

The Grammys Work: Lady Antebellum's Need You Now Is #1; Lady Gaga Is Back at #3

​All bands should be so lucky as to play the Grammys the week their record hits shelves. For instance: charmingly trite, light country trio Lady Antebellum, who just sold 481,000 fucking copies of their sophomore record, Need You Now. Those are Susan Boyle numbers. Extra bonus scorched earth p ... More >>

Grammy Strays, A/K/A Beyonce in 3-D

​Given that our favorite moment of last night's Grammy ceremony was this stray reaction shot of Beyonce, mid-"Earth Song," we are thrilled that someone produced the inevitable animated GIF. Speaking of Beyonce, have you heard Diplo/Major Lazer/Elephant Man's "Halo" remix? Pretty good! Like, wa ... More >>

I Have a Great New Idea For a Show!

​It would be a variation on My Fair Lady, the classic musical based on Shaw's Pygmalion, about a street urchin who's tutored and transformed into sophistication by some old fussbudget. My show would be a reversal called My Fair Skanky.

Free Will Astrology: December 23 through 29, 2009

Boo to Homophobic Buju Banton!

Would a musical artist who sings "Jews must die" or "black people need to be killed" get a Grammy nomination? I really don't think so, and if I am somehow off-base in assuming that, please look through this year's list of nominees--Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and so on--and let me know.

GLAAD Backs GMA For Dropping Adam Lambert

​Let's do a quick recap: Adam Lambert indulged in gay shenanigans on his now legendary American Music Awards performance. Everyone I knew was loving it, but not Good Morning America, which promptly canceled Lambert's scheduled appearance. Gay activists were furious, especially since the show w ... More >>

Come to Think of It, The-Dream's Love vs. Money Really Should Have At Least Been Nominated for a Grammy

​The man's got a point, given all he's done--*cough,* "Umbrella," *ahem* "Single Ladies"--for the crass and success-driven Grammy pageant over the last few years. That new Dave Matthews Band record is really supposed to be better than Love vs. Money? (Full disclosure: In our opinion, nothing i ... More >>

Adam Lambert Outrage Strategy Working, Gets Him Bounced from GMA

​That Adam Lambert AMA phoney-baloney outrage thing is working! Good Morning America has cancelled the free Hudson Theatre performance they were going to sponsor. "Given his controversial American Music Awards performance," says a GMA spokesperson (referring, we assume, to the rather perfunc ... More >>

Bondage Lambert, Dead Michael Jackson Enliven American Music Awards

In entertainment news, American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert performed simulated bondage sex, including fellatio and reverse buttsecks ("This was not family entertainment"), and engaged in lascivious melisma during the American Music Awards, which gave four prizes (Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist, Fa ... More >>

Local Man Disrupts MTV Awards Show 10 Years Ago

All in all, you've got to admire the restraint shown by Gothamist editor John Del Signore, who waited 10 years and--more impressively, though one supposes this wasn't exactly ever going to accord with Gothamist's VMA coverage plan-- nearly two months after the whole Kanye/Taylor Swift melodrama to ... More >>

Kanye Regrets the Error, Or Did, Anyway

​Not that you'll find it on his blog anymore, but Kanye regrets ruining the VMAs last night. Seriously, via Maura, who had to know this wasn't sticking around long:

The-Dream Announces Retirement, Which Better Not Come to Pass, We're Serious, Somebody Do Something

Loathe as we are to get pulled into retirement announcements on Twitter, for which someone will someday, maybe even today, make an excellent and Diggable list, this particular turn of events cannot happen, The-Dream having made what is easily the best album of the year, and a really good one befo ... More >>

'Summer Broadway Festival'

Grammys Fawn over Coldplay and Plant/Krauss, Set Race Relations Back 20 Years

Good for you. As any self-respecting Grammy live blog will have told you by now, the highlight of last night's occasionally lively fiasco was undoubtedly the "Rap Pack" black-and-white "Swagga Like Us" blowout, ostensibly starring Jay-Z/Kanye/Wayne/T.I. but dominated by a stupendously pregnant M ... More >>

Bon Iver: Digital Love, Analog Grief

Justin Vernon wins this year's battle of the heartbroken, Kanye's histrionics notwithstanding

Voice Critic This Close To Grammy Victory!

Nick Cave: Still Venting

The Bad Seeds chief will accept your compliments, but he wouldn't mind a little derision

The CMAs: A Running Diary

Music

Stuff you need to know to avoid cultural ostracism

How to Be an American Idiot

The Internet may eventually kill "the album" as a concept, but 2006 kept the concept album alive

The Grammy Awards: A Running Diary

Plugged In

Plug Awards push play; Bright Eyes wins Artist of the Year

A Running Diary of the Billboard Music Awards

Power of Love

Memorial service for Luther Vandross brings out the star wattage and Holy Ghost power

Roger's Big Night Out

All Mixed Up

Blondes in the Barrio