LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Train wreck or triumph? Amy Winehouse, the soul singer whose messy personal life has ravaged her promising career, will emerge from a London rehab clinic later on Sunday to perform live via satellite at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
It is perhaps one of the most keenly anticipated appearances in the 50-year history of the music industry’s top awards show — and not just because she will likely sing her big hit, “Rehab.”
“I’m going to be glued to it,” said Howard Benson, a nominee for producer of the year. “She’s a real, true talent. Her personal stuff notwithstanding, her music definitely speaks from the heart.”
Truly, whether you like the music or not, does anyone share in Howard Benson’s mock-sincere anticipation about her heartfelt music?
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Where is your snark directed? At Winehouse’s music? At her impending performance? At the Grammies in general?
As for me, who cares, the only one of these things I watch is the oscars.
Benson doesn’t come off as “mock sincere” so much as he sounds like he’s rooting for “team music biz”. He sounds a little like the way that the fraternity of celebs sound when they stick up for each other if asked to comment on a fallen comrade. we have to hear how gifted he / she is, how “hard” it is to be famous.
rth’ers know my feelings on amy’s “gift”, her “image”, and even her “look” (which is not the same as, but is related to, her image). my sympathetic views notwithstanding, i’m leaning more towards 48’s view of this particular “event”: who cares? the performance will probably be uneventful. the only event will be the media’s anticipation of something juicy that never happens, and then their attempt afterwards, for about a day, to make extra hay out of whatever little things she said or did the night of the show.
I think she’s a “true talent” in the sense that she is indeed talented. How talented is something the phrase “true talent” doesn’t say.
As for “speaking from the heart,” no. But my guess is that the embarrassing cliche may be one well-suited to win the wallets of some of her fans.
How come no one’s ever written the song “Heart and Wallet”? Just asking.
I hope she gets to sing by herself at least. Does every damn number have to be a collaboration? They just promised (threatened?) a duet between Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli. OMG! What hell is like!
You just got your duet from hell, BigSteve, if that’s what I heard over my shoulder a few minutes ago. At least Bocelli was spared having to look at Groban.
Amy Winehouse’s performance was pretty good and spirited. As always, I was put off by the three Negroes for Hire who do that same dance through every song she sings, but I tried to look at them like three toasters in an ’80s ska band. It’s not those guys who put me off, mind you, but the schtick of having to have them up there as if they’d been up there doing that stuff for beer money during Winehouse’s early years. What do I know, perhaps they al toured around in a station wagon with her in 1997.
Saturnismine puts Benson’s quote in a better perspective than I did. It’s the whole Show Business aspect of this that bugged me. It’s Winehouse’s fault that she’s in trouble with the law over drug charges every few weeks, but I’d like to think it’s not her fault that the focus of her young career is her legal/health troubles. Now that the P.T. Barnums of the Music Industry have set her on a yet a higher pedestal, she’s got two options: 1) do the whole People magazine/Barbara Walters Tears of Mercy routine or go straight back to falling on her face. Maybe she was the most talented, most exciting musician involved in this year’s GRAMMYS, but hell, she’s got one album under her belt that anyone cares about. It’s not like the event was waiting breathlessly on an appearance by a Thriller-era Michael Jackson, is it?
To answer your question, The Great 48, I didn’t know it was “snark” I was throwing out there, but whatever we decide to call it, it was directed at the phony morality play dynamic that once again fuels some supposedly big event. Maybe rock ‘n roll, or whatever genre Winehouse is part of, is forever consumed by morality play expectations, but I wish something would just BE once again, if not at the GRAMMYS then at a less-dramatic event. Some band like The Arcade Fire hits out of nowhere, as far as I could tell, and soon enough The Boss and Bowie are doing guest appearances with them. Why can’t I just come to The Arcade Fire. Why won’t showbiz just let them BE for a couple of releases before they’re on that quick cycle toward oblivion?
I know what you’re thinking: “Dude, they had 8 indie albums out that would have allowed you to BE with them as your heart desired before their last 2, which only happen to be the 2 you and another million old farts are vaguely familiar with! So, I don’t know, this probably makes me the circa-1976 Andy Williams fan scratching his head over my hero’s appearance with those upstart kids in ABBA.
All that said, I hope you have a slightly better idea of what I was going on about. I hope Winehouse can find a few more weeks to get her life together and someday turn out a strong follow-up album.
I just TIVOed my way through the thing, and found Vince Gill’s crack about Kanye West and the Beatles to be the highlight. I gotta get that dude’s last album; it’s supposed to be really good — despite the fact that he won a Grammy for it.
The Wish-He-Would-Just-Go-Away award goes to John Fogerty, for sure. Embarrassing!
Who?
There’s definitely an advantage to burying your head in the sand with modern music.
Here Joan Eyre or Joan of Arc or whatever chick flick style “ahem” period piece that was on Sunday nights on PBS for months (I swear) seems to finally be over and this is the first Sunday night it’s off and my wife has the Grammy’s on. I went upstairs and looked at funny pictures on the Internet instead.
I haven’t paid any attention to Bruce Springsteen in over 25 years and I only paid enough attention to Arcade Fire to discover that I didn’t care about them at all. So I guess I still haven’t missed anything skipping the Grammy’s.
Has any performance on that show ever been remembered by anyone outside that show’s producers?
Actually, I take that back. The highlight was Beyonce’s gams. Wowsers!
He may never reach his awards-show-performance peak again – “Jesus Walks” at the Grammys in 2005, complete with on-stage death and rebirth with giant angel wings – but I appreciated Kanye at least trying with his Tron homage performance with Daft Punk. If nothing else, you can count on him to at least try to make something out of his awards show appearances.
The real highlight of what I saw was the music industry sending Winehouse the ultimate tough love message. Before her performance and winning the big award, they had her inexplicably introduced on site by Cuba Gooding Jr. That has to be the Jack Woltz waking up with his horse’s head in his bed of cautionary tale warnings. “This can happen to you, kid.”
Only caught the end of it, but I gotta think people will be talking about Kid Rock doing…whatever the hell Kid Rock was doing. Did anybody see that?
Yeah — Keely Smith totally whupped his cracker ass.
Good call on all counts, Alexmagic. Could we expect less of you?