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      Beyoncé Makes History at a Star-Powered Grammy Ceremony

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      LOS ANGELES — Beyoncé made Grammy history on Sunday night, setting a record at the awards’ 65th annual ceremony for the most career wins by any artist, after picking up a string of trophies for “Renaissance,” her hit album that mined decades of dance music.But she was once again shut out of the major categories, winning all four of her prizes for the night in down-ballot genre categories. Harry Styles took album of the year for “Harry’s House,” Lizzo won record of the year for her retro dance anthem “About Damn Time,” and song of the year went to Bonnie Raitt for “Just Like That.” It was Beyoncé’s fourth career loss for album of the year.Styles seemed at a loss for words as he accepted his Grammy, opening his remarks with a stunned profanity.Still, Beyoncé’s accomplishment resonated throughout the evening. Accepting her 32nd career award, Beyoncé thanked God and her family, and honored her “Uncle Jonny,” a gay relative whom she has described in the past as her “godmother” and as the person who exposed her to L.G.B.T.Q. culture.“I’d like thank the queer community for your love, and for inventing the genre,” she said to roars of applause from the crowd at the Crypto.com Arena as she won best dance/electronic music album for “Renaissance,” which was widely seen as a love letter to gay culture. (Even so, Beyoncé faced a backlash recently when she performed a private concert in Dubai, in United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal.)With her latest wins, Beyoncé surpassed Georg Solti, the Hungarian-born classical conductor who died in 1997 and had long held the title of the most career wins by any artist.Even Beyoncé’s competitors cheered her on. Accepting record of the year, Lizzo told a story of being inspired by seeing Beyoncé in concert (while skipping school).“You clearly are the artist of our lives!” she shouted. (In 2017, when Adele beat Beyoncé for album of the year, she said almost the same thing.)Beyoncé also won best dance/electronic recording (“Break My Soul”), traditional R&B performance (“Plastic Off the Sofa”) and best R&B song (“Cuff It”). She had been the most nominated artist of the evening, with nine nods.Gender freedom was a theme running through the night. Not long before Beyoncé’s win, Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, and Kim Petras, a trans woman, won the award for pop/duo group performance for “Unholy,” and Petras drew cheers when she said she was “the first transgender woman to win this award.”“I hope that there’s a future where gender and identity and all these labels don’t matter that much,” Petras told reporters backstage. “Where people can just be themselves, and not get judged so hard and not be labeled so hard.”Gender freedom was a theme running through this year’s Grammys, as Kim Petras, a trans woman, and Sam Smith, a nonbinary singer, were among the night’s winners. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyAfter two years of shows that were disrupted and delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual Grammy ceremony returned in full swing to its home court in Los Angeles (Crypto.com is the renamed Staples Center), bringing the music world together for glitz, competition and, behind the scenes, plenty of business schmoozing.“We made it!” exclaimed its host, Trevor Noah. “We’re back!”The power of stardom was another of the night’s major underlying themes. The show opened with a blast of brass and the hip-swaying rhythms of Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who represents the music industry’s hopes — he is a young celebrity with global appeal and massive numbers, both on streaming services and on the road.Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who opened the show on Sunday night, represents the music industry’s hopes: a young celebrity with global appeal and the numbers to match.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressWalking through the aisles of the arena flanked by dancers in festive dress, he played two songs from his blockbuster album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” bringing both social commentary and party vibes, and getting stars like Taylor Swift dancing amid the bistro-style seating in front of the stage.Accepting the award for best música urbana album for “Un Verano,” Bad Bunny gave his speech in Spanish and English.“I just made this album with love and passion,” he said. “When you do things with love and passion, everything is easier.”Old-fashioned song craft remains a key touchstone for Grammy voters. Raitt, 73, was the surprise winner of song of the year — beating Adele, Beyoncé, Swift, Lizzo and Styles, whose songs were huge hits — for “Just Like That,” a tender meditation about an organ donation that had only modest commercial success. She accepted it as a recognition of the job of songwriting itself, and thanked other writers for providing her with material throughout her career.“I would not be up here tonight,” Raitt said, “if it wasn’t for the great soul-digging, hard-working people that put these songs and ideas to music.”Samara Joy, a singer who brought fresh interpretations to jazz classics, and began her career posting them online, won best new artist.In classic Grammy fashion, the ceremony also included some loving nods to the past.Stevie Wonder led a Motown revue that included Smokey Robinson and the country songwriter Chris Stapleton. One of the highlights of the night was a 12-minute celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop — the genre’s origin is tied to a birthday party in the Bronx in 1973 — that featured LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa, Method Man, Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Missy Elliott, Future, Grandmaster Flash and many others.A somber, multipart “In Memoriam” segment included the country singer Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” barefoot in a blood-red dress; a tribute to Takeoff of the Atlanta rap trio Migos led by his bandmate Quavo; and Raitt, Sheryl Crow and Mick Fleetwood singing “Songbird,” one of the signature compositions by Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, with Fleetwood tapping a drum like it was a gently beating heart.Kacey Musgraves singing Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” as part of a somber “In Memoriam” segment.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersStyles performed his bubbly, pensive hit “As It Was” in a silvery sequined suit with tassels that shook as he danced. “Harry’s House” also won Styles the award for pop vocal album.Kendrick Lamar won three rap prizes: best performance and best song, for “The Heart Part 5,” and best album, for “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.” Accepting the album award, he thanked his family “for giving me the courage and giving me the vulnerability to share my truth and share these stories.”Brandi Carlile, a Grammy darling in recent years, won best rock performance and best rock song for “Broken Horses,” as well as best Americana album for “In These Silent Days.”The 89-year-old Willie Nelson, who was not present, won for best country album for “A Beautiful Time,” and best country solo performance for the song “Live Forever.”Swift ended the night with one victory, best music video for “All Too Well: The Short Film,” but lost her three other nods — including her sixth career loss in song of the year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” an extended remake of a song she first released in 2012.The first lady, Jill Biden, announced the winner of a new award, best song for social change, which went to the 25-year-old Iranian songwriter Shervin Hajipour, whose song “Baraye” became an anthem for the women’s rights protests there last year. The prize was chosen by what the academy described as a “blue-ribbon committee.”For an industry that has lately gotten worried about the difficulty minting stars amid the fire hose of content in the age of streaming and social media, this year’s list of nominations was about as good as it gets. It guaranteed plenty of star power and some drama over winners and losers. On Grammy night, drama is a good thing.As much as the Recording Academy, the nonprofit institution behind the Grammys, promotes its mission of celebrating artistic excellence and being a supportive home for creators year-round, the Grammys is also a television show that needs to attract a large audience.As they have for all major awards shows, ratings for the Grammys have been slipping for years. But the past two years have been brutal. In 2021, when the Grammys put on an outdoor show with no audience, its viewership fell to 8.8 million, the lowest ever; last year, when the show was delayed by the spread of the Omicron variant and held for the first time in Las Vegas, the number was only marginally better, at 8.9 million.This year’s awards recognized music released between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022, and were selected by the 11,000-member voting body of the Recording Academy, which includes artists, songwriters, producers and other music professionals.Of the 91 awards this year, all but a dozen were given out in a nontelevised ceremony on Sunday afternoon.Viola Davis’s Grammy win makes her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyThe actress Viola Davis won best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording for her memoir “Finding Me,” making her the newest EGOT — the coveted acronym for the winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.Among the new categories this year was songwriter of the year (non-classical), intended to recognize the writers who work behind the scenes. It was won by Tobias Jesso Jr., who has written songs for Adele, Styles and others. Stephanie Economou was the first winner for best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media for her work on the game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok.Below the superstar level, the Grammys have the power to transform artists’ careers. The Tennessee State University Marching Band was the first college marching band ever nominated for best roots gospel album, and it won with “The Urban Hymnal.”Accepting that award, Sir the Baptist, one of the album’s producers, addressed the straitened finances of historically Black colleges and universities. “HBCUs are so grossly underfunded to where I had to put my last dime in order to get us across the line,” he said. “We’re here with our pockets empty but our hands aren’t.” More

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      Grammys 2023: How to Watch and What to Expect

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      A guide to everything you need to know for the 65th annual awards on Sunday night.After two years of pandemic-related disruptions, the 65th annual Grammy Awards are returning on Sunday to their longtime home at the Crypto.com Arena (formerly the Staples Center) in Los Angeles.The night’s big story is Beyoncé. With 28 Grammy wins to her name, the star could become the most decorated Grammy artist ever. She needs three wins to tie, and four to beat the conductor Georg Solti, who holds the record for most overall wins.Her field-leading nine nominations this year include the three top categories — album, song and record of the year — where she has previously struggled to win. The Recording Academy, the institution behind the awards, has faced longstanding criticism that the show often fails to recognize Black talent with its biggest awards. Over the past few years, it has been trying to address that by eliminating nearly all of the nominating committees that determined the ballot and pushing to attract a younger and more diverse pool of voters.A bad night for Beyoncé, who enters the ceremony with an adored album in “Renaissance,” a famously vocal fan base known as the BeyHive and only one career win in an all-genre category, could mean more hard conversations for the Grammys.The awards on Sunday will recognize recordings released between Oct. 1, 2021 and Sept. 30, 2022. There were 16,741 eligible entries considered, and superstars including Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift will contend for top honors.The Grammy Awards 2023The 65th annual ceremony will be held on Feb. 5 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, after two years of delays and complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.Beyoncé: With a dominant new album and the chance to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history, all eyes are on the pop superstar ahead of the ceremony. What could go wrong?Bonnie Raitt: Long renowned as an interpreter of songs, the musician has quietly built a catalog of her own. Up for song of the year, she talked about her lifetime onstage in an interview with The Times.The-Dream and Muni Long: Ahead of the first-ever Grammy Award for songwriter of the year, the two musicians, who are both up for awards, trace their unique journeys to recognition.Here’s how to watch — and what to expect at — Sunday’s ceremony.What time does it all start?The ceremony will air live on Sunday, at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) on CBS and stream live on Paramount+.Before the prime-time event, the premiere ceremony, where about 80 of the 91 prizes will be awarded, takes place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. It begins at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time (12:30 p.m. Pacific time), and is available to watch in real time on live.Grammy.com and the Recording Academy’s YouTube page.The comedian Randy Rainbow will help host that event, and performers include Arooj Aftab, Blind Boys of Alabama, Madison Cunningham, Samara Joy, La Marisoul from La Santa Cecilia, Anoushka Shankar and Carlos Vives.How do I watch the red carpet?The parade of fashion and awkward interviews commences at 4 p.m. Eastern time on E!, and “Live From E!: Grammys” starts at 6 p.m. Celebrity arrivals will be streamed at grammy.com beginning at 6:30 p.m.Who is hosting?Trevor Noah, formerly of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, will do the honors for a third year.Who are the top contenders?Beyoncé, who this week announced a world tour supporting her latest album, “Renaissance,” has the most nominations, with nine, followed by Kendrick Lamar with eight and Adele and Brandi Carlie with seven each. Harry Styles, Mary J. Blige, Future, DJ Khaled and the producer and songwriter The-Dream all landed six apiece.What’s the breakdown of Beyoncé’s nominations?Beyoncé will go head-to-head with Adele once again in multiple categories, most notably album of the year, an award Beyoncé has yet to win. Adele cleaned up in all of the major contests in 2017, when “25” squared off against “Lemonade,” which led to Adele at first tearfully saying that she could not accept her album prize. Beyoncé’s losses in the show’s premier categories have also fueled wider complaints about how the Grammys have often failed to recognize Black artists in its all-genre categories. Only three Black women have ever taken home album of the year — the most recent was Lauryn Hill in 1999.In addition to album of the year (“Renaissance”), Beyoncé has nominations for record and song of the year (“Break My Soul”), best dance/electronic recording (“Break My Soul”), best dance/electronic album (“Renaissance”), best R&B performance (“Virgo’s Groove”), best traditional R&B performance (“Plastic Off the Sofa”), best R&B song (“Cuff It”) and best song written for visual media (“Be Alive” from the movie “King Richard”).Who will hit the stage?Bad Bunny (the most nominated artist at the Latin Grammys in November), Lizzo and Harry Styles will perform during the prime-time ceremony. The live lineup also includes Mary J. Blige, Brandi Carlile, Luke Combs, Sam Smith and Kim Petras, DJ Khaled, and Steve Lacy. Stevie Wonder will also perform with Smokey Robinson and Chris Stapleton.In celebration of 50 years of hip-hop, a special performance bringing together genre legends and contemporary stars will feature Busta Rhymes with Spliff Star, Missy Elliott, Future, GloRilla, Ice-T, Lil Baby, Lil Wayne, Queen Latifah, Run-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa and others. LL Cool J will introduce the segment, perform and share a few words.And as the show honors the artists we lost last year, Kacey Musgraves will perform for Loretta Lynn; Sheryl Crow, Mick Fleetwood and Bonnie Raitt will pay tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie; and the Migos rapper Quavo will be joined by Maverick City Music to celebrate Takeoff, who died at 28 in a shooting in November.Who will be handing out the awards?Jill Biden will take the stage on Sunday as a presenter, but she’s not the first-ever first lady to grace the Grammys. (Michelle Obama made a surprise appearance in a 2019 opening segment and won a Grammy the following year for best spoken word album.) Other presenters include Cardi B, James Corden, Billy Crystal, Viola Davis, Dwayne Johnson, Olivia Rodrigo and Shania Twain.What else is new this year?The Recording Academy introduced a new award for songwriter of the year, which will go to a single songwriter or a team of writers for a given body of work. Four other categories are arriving, too, for alternative music performance, Americana music performance, spoken word poetry album and score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media. In addition, a prize for best song for social change will be handed out the day before the ceremony.Who might make history?Beyoncé, of course, who could become the Grammys’ most awarded artist. The superstar, already recognized as the “winningest woman in Grammy history,” and her husband, Jay-Z, both have 88 total nominations each — a tie for most Grammy nods collected by any artist.Bad Bunny also has a chance to join the Grammy record book: An album of the year win for “Un Verano Sin Ti” would make it the first exclusively Spanish-language release to earn the honor. His nomination was historic, too, as “Un Verano Sin Ti” is the first album released entirely in Spanish to earn an album of the year nod. More

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      It’s Beyoncé’s Time to Shine at the Grammys … Right?

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      With a dominant new album, “Renaissance,” and the chance to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history, all eyes are on the pop superstar ahead of Sunday’s show. What could go wrong?Beyoncé enters the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday in rarefied air — a pop deity festooned with trophies, supported by one of the music world’s most ardent fan bases and on the precipice of Grammy immortality. So why does she also feel like an underdog?Already the winningest woman in Grammy history, with 28 victories, Beyoncé has a field-leading nine nominations this year. She is tied with her husband, Jay-Z, for the most nods collected by any artist, with 88.In what could make for dramatic television, Beyoncé needs just three more Grammys to match — and four to beat — the record for most overall wins, a position currently held by the conductor Georg Solti, who died in 1997. And for the third time in her career, Beyoncé, 41, is nominated in all three top categories — record, song and album of the year — raising the possibility that her crowning moment could come at the climax of a show that in recent years has struggled to find an audience and generate positive headlines.And yet.While many Grammy watchers believe Beyoncé will enter from a position of strength, with “Renaissance,” her dance-infused album, garnering both commercial and critical success, the singer’s coronation is far from assured, thanks to her own complicated history with the awards. Despite Beyoncé’s oodles of wins, she is just 1 for 13 in the major, all-genre categories for releases on which she was a lead artist.As the ceremony approaches — with stars like Adele, Harry Styles, Lizzo, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny also in contention for the premier prizes — the key question for fans and industry insiders isn’t how big she will win, but rather: What if she loses, again?Harry Styles, who is slated to perform at the Grammys, has six nominations, including album, record and song of the year.The New York TimesThis year more than most, public perception of the Grammys’ relevance may come down to the fate of a single artist. A prominent win for Beyoncé could be seen as an overdue make-good, which is something of a Grammy specialty. But a notable loss could call into question the redemption narrative that the Recording Academy, the institution behind the awards, has been carefully tending for years, as it has tried to address longstanding criticism that the show too often fails to recognize Black talent with top awards.The Grammy Awards 2023The 65th annual ceremony will be held on Feb. 5 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, after two years of delays and complications caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.Beyoncé: With a dominant new album and the chance to become the most awarded artist in Grammy history, all eyes are on the pop superstar ahead of the ceremony. What could go wrong?Bonnie Raitt: Long renowned as an interpreter of songs, the musician has quietly built a catalog of her own. Up for song of the year, she talked about her lifetime onstage in an interview with The Times.The-Dream and Muni Long: Ahead of the first-ever Grammy Award for songwriter of the year, the two musicians, who are both up for awards, trace their unique journeys to recognition.That complaint, along with suspicions about the voting process, has led some high-profile Black artists to abandon the Grammys in recent years, like Drake, Frank Ocean and the Weeknd. But there are also some signs that the awards may be changing. Last year, Jon Batiste, the Black jazz bandleader, took home album of the year, and in 2021 a Black Lives Matter protest anthem by H.E.R. won song of the year. A push to attract a younger and more diverse voting pool has resulted in 19 percent more women and 38 percent more members of “traditionally underrepresented communities” since 2019, the academy says.Those numbers would seem favorable for Beyoncé. But her track record in album of the year, traditionally the most coveted prize, is especially wrenching. In 2010, her “I Am … Sasha Fierce” lost to Taylor Swift’s “Fearless.” In 2015, Beck’s mellow “Morning Phase” was the upset winner, beating out Beyoncé’s internet-breaking, self-titled surprise LP. Two years later, when Beyoncé’s paradigm-shifting visual album “Lemonade” lost to Adele’s “25,” Adele seemed almost embarrassed to accept the award, calling Beyoncé the “artist of my life.”Should Adele win a third album of the year trophy on Sunday, with “30” — or if Styles, Abba, Coldplay or Brandi Carlile comes out on top — it would be the fourth time that Beyoncé has lost that prize to a white artist, noted Paul Grein, the awards editor at Billboard. “The Grammys would get beat up,” he said. But, he added, “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”After two years of disruption by Covid-19, the Grammys are finally back in Los Angeles, on their home court, the Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as the Staples Center).Bad Bunny, Lamar, Lizzo and Mary J. Blige round out the competition for album of the year, and besides Beyoncé, the night holds some potential buzzy moments. Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” a streaming juggernaut, is the first release entirely in Spanish up for album of the year. After five failed nominations in song of the year, Swift could finally win for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” an extended remake of a track she first released in 2012.The performers on Sunday will include Styles, Bad Bunny, Lizzo, Sam Smith and Kim Petras, Steve Lacy, Blige, Luke Combs and Carlile. Fan cults and industry gossips have been speculating for weeks over whether Beyoncé, Swift, Lamar or Adele will also perform.Lizzo is also nominated in the top three categories, for her album “Special” and single “About Damn Time.”Scott Legato/Getty Images For SiriusXMBut the story line that has drawn by far the most attention is Beyoncé’s. And as much as fans desire a triumph, pessimists have history on their side. Only three Black women have ever won album of the year — Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston and Lauryn Hill, all in the 1990s — and of Beyoncé’s 28 wins, only one has been in a top category, song of the year. That was more than a decade ago, when she was recognized as a songwriter for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”“The fact that she has not won a major award since 2010 is insane,” said Brandon Katamara, a student in Cardiff, Wales, who has run @rumiyonce, a Beyoncé fan account with more than 400,000 followers on Instagram, since he was 13.Katamara, now 20, said that even if Beyoncé’s No. 1 hit “Break My Soul” came away with wins in song or record of the year, it wouldn’t lessen the sting. “We don’t care if she just takes one award,” he said. “We just want her to win album of the year.”And should she lose? Katamara predicted a “9.5 out of 10” on the social-media backlash scale. (The nightmare scenario for the BeyHive: a shutout that results in their heroine being passed by the Americana artist Alison Krauss, who has two nominations in genre categories this year and trails Beyoncé by only one win as the most-awarded woman.)Harvey Mason Jr., a producer who is the chief executive of the Recording Academy, said it would be unfair to look to a Beyoncé victory or loss in any single contest as a test of changes to the voting membership, which numbers about 11,000.“If voters are more diverse,” he said, “my hope is that the results would be more diverse across the entire field, not in just one category.”According to figures provided by the Recording Academy, the largest voting blocs by genre are pop at 23 percent and jazz at 16 percent. Rock and alternative are counted separately but, if combined, would make up 25 percent of voters; R&B sits at 15 percent.In 2018, the academy also expanded the number of nominees in the top categories to eight from five, and increased that number again to 10 nominees in a last-minute change in 2021, potentially adding more unpredictability to the results.Yet for many Grammy observers, Beyoncé is indeed a barometer of the awards’ complex treatment of Black musicians overall.“It’s always rocky,” said Cipha Sounds, a veteran radio personality now with 94.7 The Block, a throwback hip-hop and R&B station in New York. “It feels like they don’t give the same amount of love that they do to other genres, but when they do it feels kind of forced,” as if the academy has to “check the diversity boxes,” he added.Still, he said, Black artists and fans crave the affirmation that comes with winning a Grammy. “We just want regular credit,” he said.For the academy, a nonprofit group that draws the bulk of its revenue from fees related to the television broadcast, attracting eyeballs to the annual show is vital. Those numbers have been sliding for years. In 2021, 8.8 million viewers watched the show, an all-time low; last year, it was 8.9 million.At the same time, the Super Bowl halftime show has emerged as perhaps the most gargantuan media event in music — last year an average of 103.4 million people watched a nostalgic hip-hop segment with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent and others — and this year’s show, on Feb. 12, featuring Rihanna, has been bubbling for weeks as a huge pop-culture moment. Recently, an email bounced around the offices of Billboard magazine. “Music’s Biggest Night is coming up,” it read. “And a week earlier, there’s the Grammys!”In recent years, the Grammys have been buffeted by a series of controversies over nominations, performances and even the power struggles within the academy. As unpleasant as those may have been for the organization, they did drive a certain amount of interest. This year, there has been much less buzz, good or bad. Is the Beyoncé question enough to make it a successful show?“I’m OK with there not being controversy before the show,” Mason, the academy chief, said diplomatically. “I like to think it’s going to be about the music.” More

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      Christine Farnon, ‘Guiding Light’ of the Grammys, Dies at 97

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      Present at the creation, she guarded the awards’ independence and integrity but “never received the recognition she deserves,” one record producer wrote.Christine Farnon, a quiet force behind the Grammy Awards who was credited with shepherding the event from a private black-tie affair to a telecast seen by tens of millions, died on Oct. 24 in Los Angeles. She was 97.The death was confirmed by her daughter, Joanna Shipley.The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Grammys, was conceived partly in Ms. Farnon’s kitchen in Hollywood Hills. That was one place where her husband, Dennis Farnon, a musician who became a music producer and record executive at Capitol and RCA Records, met with other musicians and music executives in founding the Recording Academy. While they deliberated, Ms. Farnon took notes.She was eventually promoted from unpaid volunteer to paid staff member, the first, and from local to national executive. She organized the first Grammy ceremony, on May 4, 1959, which included a black-tie dinner with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin at the Grand Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. She remained with the organization until 1992.The Recording Academy is the music industry equivalent of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which puts on the Oscars, and it similarly performs a number of professional functions. But it’s best known for its annual awards ceremony.Bill Ivey, who held high-level positions with the Recording Academy, including president, for more than 20 years, and who later ran the National Endowment for the Arts, said in a phone interview that the Recording Academy’s history could be defined by a division into “two eras.” There was Ms. Farnon’s tenure, when the Grammys were a fledgling event, and there was everything that came afterward, with the Grammys now the music industry standard for achievement.In the early years, “Chris was the person who internalized the values of an artist-driven academy and created a set of rules that were applied vigorously,” Mr. Ivey said.She ensured that voting privileges for Grammy Awards were restricted to those who had substantial credits as musicians, and that the same criteria were applied to presenters of the awards on TV. To honor all nominees, she fought successfully for the presenters to say, “The Grammy goes to…,” and not, “The winner is…,” arguing that the former phrase better captured excellence among equals.Ms. Farnon was just as watchful about how Grammys were used outside the ceremony itself. She scrutinized the backgrounds of movie scenes for any unauthorized appearances of Grammy trophies. When she heard that Willie Nelson was in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, she made sure that he knew that his Grammy trophies were technically owned by the Recording Academy and thus could not be seized as his. Mr. Nelson kept his trophies, Mr. Ivey said.As the Grammys became more prominent, record companies and television producers sought to exert greater influence on the awards show, but Ms. Farnon stood firm in trying to protect the Grammys’ independence.“She built an asset that was incredibly valued because it was very legitimate,” Mr. Ivey said. “It was the kind of leadership that succeeded by tapping the brakes more than by pushing on the throttle.”Pierre Cossette, the producer who first persuaded television executives to broadcast the Grammys, described Ms. Farnon similarly in a 2003 memoir, “Another Day in Showbiz,” writing, “Christine has never received the recognition she deserves for everything she did to make the Grammy Awards show the huge success that it has become.”Toward the end of her tenure, in 1984, the Grammys attracted its largest-ever audience, more than 51 million viewers, according to Billboard.When she retired, Ms. Farnon became the first woman to receive a Trustees Award, the highest honor the ceremony bestowed on non-performers. A tribute to her in the program book for that year’s ceremony was titled “The Recording Academy’s Guiding Light.”Christine Helen Miller was born on June 24, 1925, in Chicago. Her father, John, was a businessman, and her mother, Caroline (Caspar) Miller, was a homemaker.The family moved to Los Angeles when Christine was a teenager. She graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1941 and attended a public business school in the city.She and Mr. Farnon divorced in 1960. Her daughter is her sole survivor.When she received the Trustees Award, Ms. Farnon retained her characteristic modesty.“I thank God for staying so close to this wonderful organization through the years,” she said, “and for being such a good listener.” More

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      California Bill Could Restrict the Use of Rap Lyrics in Court

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      The bill, which applies more broadly to other forms of creative expression, has unanimously passed the Senate and Assembly and could become law by the end of September.A California bill that would restrict the use of rap lyrics and other creative works as evidence in criminal proceedings has unanimously passed both the State Senate and Assembly, and could soon be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.The bill, introduced in February by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat who represents South Los Angeles, comes amid national attention on the practice following the indictment of the Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna on gang-related charges. Prosecutors have drawn on the men’s lyrics in making their case.The California measure, however, would apply more broadly to any creative works, including other types of music, poetry, film, dance, performance art, visual art and novels.“What you write could ultimately be used against you, and that could inhibit creative expression,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said Wednesday in an interview. He noted that the bill ultimately boiled down to a question of First Amendment rights.“This is America,” he said. “You should be able to have that creativity.”Mr. Newsom has until Sep. 30 to sign the bill into law. If he neither signs nor vetoes the bill by that date, the measure would automatically become law. The law would then go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, Mr. Jones-Sawyer said.When asked whether Mr. Newsom planned to sign the bill, his office said that it could not comment on pending legislation. “As will all measures that reach the governor’s desk, it will be evaluated on its merits,” it said.Though the bill’s genesis is in preventing rap stars’ lyrics from being weaponized against them, the measure loosely defines “creative expression” to include “forms, sounds, words, movements, or symbols.”It would require a court to evaluate whether such works can be included as evidence by weighing their “probative value” in the case against the “substantial danger of undue prejudice” that might result from including them. The court should consider the possibility that such works could be treated as “evidence of the defendant’s propensity for violence or criminal disposition, as well as the possibility that the evidence will inject racial bias into the proceedings,” the bill says.“People were going to jail merely because of their appearance,” Mr. Jones-Sawyer said. “We weren’t trying to get people off the hook. We’re just making sure that biases, especially racial biases toward African Americans, weren’t used against them in a court of law.”The bill would require that decisions about the evidence be made pretrial, out of the presence of a jury. For decades, prosecutors have used rappers’ lyrics against them even as their music has become mainstream, with critics and fans arguing that the artists should be given the same freedom to explore violence in their work as were musicians like Johnny Cash (did he really shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?) or authors like Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote “American Psycho.”In other cases, though lyrics were not used as evidence, they were discussed in front of the jury, which “poisoned the well” by allowing bias to enter the court, according to Mr. Jones-Sawyer’s office. It also noted that while country music has a subgenre known as the “murder ballad,” it is only the lyrics of rap artists that have been singled out.Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, who has extensively researched the use of rap lyrics in criminal proceedings, said that the way prosecutors have used defendant-authored lyrics in court was unique to rap.The practice, she said, essentially treated the lyrics as “nothing more than autobiographical accounts — denying rap the status of art.” The California bill is significant, Dr. Kubrin said, because it would require judges to consider whether the lyrics would inject racial bias into proceedings. “This is bigger than rap,” she said.Among the first notable times the tactic was used was against the rapper Snoop Dogg at his 1996 murder trial, when prosecutors cited lyrics from “Murder Was the Case.” The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was acquitted.Snoop Dogg entering a Los Angeles court in 1996, where a prosecutor cited his lyrics during a murder trial. He was acquitted.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressMost recently, the charges against Young Thug and Gunna have called national attention to the tactic. Both men, who have said they are innocent, were identified as members of a criminal street gang, some of whom were charged with violent crimes including murder and attempted armed robbery.Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, co-wrote the Grammy-winning “This is America” with Childish Gambino and is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Atlanta’s hip-hop scene.In November, two New York lawmakers introduced a similar bill that would prevent lyrics from being used as evidence in criminal cases unless there was a “factual nexus between the creative expression and the facts of the case.” It passed the Senate in May.In July, U.S. Representatives Hank Johnson of Georgia and Jamaal Bowman of New York, both Democrats, introduced federal legislation, the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, which they said would protect artists from “the wrongful use of their lyrics against them.”The California bill is supported by several other music organizations and activist groups, including the Black Music Action Coalition California, the Public Defenders Association and Smart Justice California, which advocates criminal justice reform.In a statement of support from June, the Black Music Action Coalition, an advocacy organization that battles systemic racism in the music business, said that prosecutors almost exclusively weaponized rappers’ lyrics against men of color.“Creative expression should not be used as evidence of bad character,” the organization said, maintaining that the claim that themes expressed in art were an indication of the likelihood that a person was violent or dishonest was “simply false.”Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, said that the bill was intended to protect not only rappers, but also artists across all genres of music, and other forms of creativity.“It’s bigger than any one individual case,” Mr. Mason said. “In no way, at no time, do I feel that someone’s art should be used against them.” More

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      The Grammys Have a New Award: Songwriter of the Year

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      The honor is part of a slate of changes, including a best score soundtrack award for video games and a merit award for best song for social change.Coming to the Grammy Awards next year: a new prize for songwriter of the year.That award, given in recognition of “the written excellence, profession and art of songwriting,” is one of a handful of tweaks to the Grammy rules for the 65th annual ceremony.Four other new categories are coming, including best alternative music performance, Americana music performance, spoken word poetry album and score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media, the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, announced Thursday. There will also be a new merit award for best song for social change, as chosen by a special committee.The biggest change is the songwriter award. Since the first Grammy ceremony in 1959, song of the year has been one of the most prestigious prizes, going to the composers of a single song. The first winners were Franco Migliacci and Domenico Modugno, for “Nel Blu, Dipinto di Blu” (better known as “Volare”), and the most recent prize went to Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak and two collaborators for “Leave the Door Open.”In recent years songwriters have been lobbying the Recording Academy for greater recognition, which has come gradually. At the 60th annual Grammys in 2018, songwriters were added to the ballot for album of the year, though only if they contributed to at least 33 percent of an LP; for the 2022 show, that limit was eliminated, allowing any credited songwriter of new material to be nominated. (Samples don’t count, nor do the writers of old songs — hence Cole Porter’s omission this year for Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s album “Love for Sale.”) In 2021, the academy created a Songwriters and Composers Wing for its members.The new category, officially called songwriter of the year (non-classical) — though no classical counterpart exists — will go to a single songwriter or a team of writers for a given body of work. A similar approach has long been taken for producer of the year.“The intent with this new category is to recognize the professional songwriters who write songs for other artists to make a living,” said Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy. “This dedicated award highlights the importance of songwriting’s significant contribution to the musical process, and as a non-performing songwriter myself, I’m thrilled to see this award come to life.”Among the other changes this year is the establishment of “craft committees” in three classical categories. Teams of specialists will have the final say in who makes the ballot for producer of the year (classical), best engineered album (classical) and best contemporary classical composition. The change follows some grumbling in the classical world about last year’s nomination of Jon Batiste — the jazz bandleader and TV personality who won album of the year — for the contemporary composition prize. (The award went to Caroline Shaw.)The change is notable since last year the academy eliminated its controversial nominating committees, which acted as an invisible hand in dozens of categories, though craft committees were kept for categories like engineering and packaging that require special expertise.The new categories arrive after a series of reductions more than a decade ago. In 2011, for example, the academy dropped 31 categories, consolidating many separate male and female awards and cutting some in fields like classical and Latin. Two years earlier, the polka category — where annual submissions had dwindled to as few as 20 titles — was cut after a 24-year run.The latest Grammy ceremony, in April, had 86 categories. At the first one, there were 28. More

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      Louis C.K.’s Grammy Victory Leads to Backlash

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      Some comedians are questioning how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone who had admitted to sexual misconduct.“How was your last couple years?” the comedian Louis C.K. says to the audience on the first track to his album “Sincerely Louis CK.” “How was 2018 and 2019 for you guys? Anybody else get in global amounts of trouble?”Louis C.K. did, after he admitted, in 2017, to masturbating in front of women. Several said in interviews that he had done so without their consent; in a statement acknowledging the incidents, he claimed he had always asked first, but later realized that was insufficient since there were power differentials at play. For a short time he disappeared from public view, as a movie he directed and starred in was shelved and other deals dissolved in the early days of the #MeToo movement.But Louis C.K. returned to stand-up, first at comedy clubs and then at bigger venues, which often sold out. And on Sunday night he received a sign of support from the entertainment industry: “Sincerely Louis CK” — his first album since the scandal — won the Grammy for best comedy album.The album opens with the chants and wild applause of an audience.The response to his Grammy was less joyous. As his name trended on Twitter, many comedians, comedy fans and others wondered how the Recording Academy saw fit to bestow an award to someone with an admitted history of sexual misconduct.“Every woman who has been harassed and abused in the comedy business, I hear you and see you and I am so, so angry,” the podcast host Jesse Thorn, who interviews comedians, wrote, followed by several expletives.Female comics shared their own responses. Jen Kirkman posted a segment from her latest album, “OK, Gen-X,” in which she recounts her own encounter with Louis C.K. She had avoided talking about in detail previously, she explained in the bit, because of negative and threatening blowback. “I’ll forward you the rape threats I get after this,” she said.On Sunday, Kirkman reposted some messages from supporters of Louis C.K. who responded to her, often hatefully and in terms that diminished the experiences of assault survivors.The Australian performer Felicity Ward offered a lengthy list of mostly female comics “who’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. Follow, see, buy their stuff.”And the comedian Mona Shaikh wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that the award sent a troubling message. “The comedy establishment sends a dog whistle to sexual predators, forgiving their abusive actions as long as they offer a superficial apology (often drafted by their publicists) and go underground for a year or so,” she wrote. “After that, they can emerge and revive their careers.”Last fall, after the nomination of Louis C.K. and others like Marilyn Manson — who is facing an investigation over multiple sexual assault allegations — drew public ire, Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, defended the right to nominate anybody as long as they met the organization’s eligibility rules.“We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record, we won’t look at anything other than the legality within our rules of, is this recording for this work eligible based on date and other criteria,” he told the trade publication The Wrap. (Marilyn Manson was later removed from the nominations list as a songwriter on Kanye West’s track “Jail,” but remained eligible as one of West’s collaborators on “Donda,” which was up for album of the year.)Rather than weighing in on who could be nominated, Mason said the Grammys would instead draw a line around who was invited to the ceremony, held this year in Las Vegas. The comedy award was one of dozens presented in a ceremony that was held before the prime-time broadcast and was shown online only. Louis C.K. did not attend. Representatives for the Recording Academy did not return requests for comment.On the album, amid bits about religion, aging and sex, Louis C.K. addresses his misconduct a few times, mostly jokingly. “Man, I was in a lot of trouble,” he says in the opening. “Wait till they see those pictures of me in blackface. That’s going to make it a lot worse. Because there’s a lot of those, there’s thousands of pictures of me in blackface. I can’t stop doing it. I just — I like it. I like how it feels.”This trophy is the third Grammy for Louis C.K. in the comedy album category.The Recording Academy does not release details of how its more than 11,000 eligible members vote. Members are limited in the number of categories they may cast a vote in, as the academy tries to encourage them to vote in their various areas of expertise. The nominations process was tweaked for this year’s awards after complaints of secret agendas and uneven playing fields, and boycotts by major artists like the Weeknd.In recent years, the Recording Academy has also been roiled by accusations that it did not include or acknowledge enough women or people of color, and the organization has pledged to do better. But a report last month from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that the number of women credited on pop songs has remained largely unchanged for a decade, and that a Grammy-led effort to hire more female producers and engineers did almost nothing.The comedy category has changed names and focus somewhat over the years as recorded comedy shifted from musical numbers to spoken word. Bill Cosby won the prize a record seven times; in 2012, one of his albums was also named to a Grammys Hall of Fame. In the 64-year history of the Grammys, women have been nominated more than 40 times for comedy but only five have won awards outright: Elaine May (as part of a duo with Mike Nichols); Lily Tomlin; Whoopi Goldberg; Kathy Griffin; and, in 2021, Tiffany Haddish. More