What Every Musician Can Learn from the Grammy Telecast – 2018

Every year the Grammy’s get a lot of media coverage. “Is the show relevant?” “Are the voting members of the Recording Academy out of touch with today’s taste and the current direction of the music industry?” “Should we care about awards shows at all?”

This year there was the added pressure of how the Recording Academy would or wouldn’t deal with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

These social issues are important. And, there are plenty of commentators talking about them. So, I’d like to offer something completely different:

9 Ways Watching the Grammy Telecast Offers Valuable Lessons for All Musicians

1. Always Give It Your All

Successful musicians are willing to take risks and do things that most people would never imagine doing. If you’re willing to give it your all – physically, mentally, emotionally – to create the music you want to create, you’ll have a more fulfilling experience every time you perform.

I’m not saying that most of the performances at this year’s Grammy’s showcased artists giving it their all. Some performers looked like they were just going through the motions. But there were a couple that stood out:

• Kendrick Lamar’s stunning, imaginative, compelling performance was visually striking, socially important, and sure to be controversial with some people. Lamar is a terrific example of an artist who is willing to take emotional risks with his music.
• Playing on a barge in the middle of the Hudson River in January, U2 bundled themselves up in overcoats, scarves, and fingerless gloves to survive what must have been a physically painful performance. If you’ve never performed in extreme heat or extreme cold, it is an uncomfortable experience that I do not recommend if you can avoid it. But, if you are willing to endure this physical challenge for the sake of your music, it could be just what it takes to make you stand out from everyone else.

2. Be Visually Compelling on Stage

Many performers at this year’s Grammy’s wore white to support the TimesUp movement. We should all join them in supporting the end to sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in our society.

I’m not a political commentator. I help performers be their best when they most need to be their best. So, I’d like to mention something that is less important to our society, but a worthy lesson for all musicians who take the stage:

Visually standing out when you’re on stage is essential. There were many, many instances at the Grammy’s this year where the lead singer was in white while the rest of the band was in black or gray. The contrast was visually stunning and forced the audience’s eyes to remain on the person in white.

Now, I’m not saying that you need to cover your piano in white, feather angel wings and dye your hair white like Lady Gaga did – while her guitarist was dressed in black. But you might want to think about the equivalent of the long white overcoats worn by Sam Smith or Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild. Having an obvious visual focus on your stage can be an important element in creating a memorable performance.

3. It’s All About the Energy

While every musician spends time daily improving their technique and their craft, when you’re on stage the energy you put out to your audience ends up being more important than technical perfection. You’ve got to give some thought to how you’re bringing the energy level of your music up and down to express yourself. It is this emotional impact that audiences remember – not some technical skill you’ve spent years perfecting.

There were several performances where the artists purposefully manipulated the energy level of what they were doing on stage:

• Lady Gaga announcing that her song “Joanne” is about her aunt instantly put the audience on her side. Whether or not Lady Gaga had the vocal performance she wanted to have didn’t matter. The energy in the room was with her.
• Bruno Mars and Cardi B going to the downstage area near the audience and dancing up a storm. Wow! The energy just exploded.
• My favorite use of energy in a performance was much more subtle but hugely powerful. In the tribute to Fats Domino and Chuck Berry, Jon Batiste and Gary Clark, Jr., showed their formidable talents in a stripped-down trio arrangement. But, it was drummer Joe Saylor who stole the show for me. In “Maybelline” Saylor stuck to a simple tambourine on the first verse, then burst out on full drum set to explode the energy for Clark’s guitar solo.

If you can do something with every performance that changes energy levels in the room, you will be a force to be reckoned with!

4. Visualize, Visualize, Visualize

It’s so important to look out into your future as a musician and see, hear, feel, taste, and smell the success you want – rather than focusing your thinking on the hurdles you’re facing right now. Visualizing the future you want is one thing that many successful musicians, artists, athletes, writers, and others have done for years before they achieve their success.

This was so poignantly illustrated at the Grammy’s in Alessia Cara’s speech when she won Best New Artist. I love what she said:

“I’ve been pretend-winning Grammy’s since I was a kid in my shower . . . You are the reason I don’t have to win Grammy’s in my shower any more.”

5. Some Things You Try Won’t Work

Musicians can never expect all of their performances, all of their songs, or all of their media interviews to be successful. It’s okay to fail occasionally – as long as you pick yourself up, keep moving forward, and get back on stage to try again.

For my taste, there were a couple performances that stood out for just not really working successfully. The vision for them may have sounded good on paper, but the actual execution left a lot to be desired.

• Ben Platt’s performance of “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story never really came together because of the arrangement. He was backed up only by a cellist and a guitarist. The arrangement sounded thin and it never rose up to truly affect listeners on a visceral level. Maybe a string quartet plus guitar would have done the trick. Or maybe Platt could have had the same full-orchestra treatment that Patty Lupone got immediately after him. It just didn’t seem to work.
• Two country stars – relative newcomer Chris Stapleton and living legend Emmylou Harris – teamed up to pay tribute to the late Tom Petty. Even for these two huge talents, they couldn’t seem to get the song moving forward. They made no eye contact, played similar guitar voicings, and kept to a single style of vocal harmony throughout. It looked awkward and felt awkward to listen to. I was dreaming that the Heartbreakers would suddenly be there to back them up.

If you ever find yourself trying something musically that doesn’t work, don’t take it too seriously. Not everything you (or Grammy arrangers) come up with can be genius-level. It’s okay to toss some ideas and try new ones – even if you’ve already put hours and hours into the idea that just isn’t coming together.

6. You Need a Team

Don’t try to make it on your own. If you’re putting together a band, have a sound engineer as one of your team – so even a performance in a small club sounds the way you want it to sound. If you’re spending too much time booking gigs, get a booking agent or manager – or even just an enthusiastic friend or fan – to do that work for you.

The Grammy telecast is a technical miracle. There is so much going on, and it takes a huge team to make this happen.

The show uses three stages for the music performances (main stage left, main stage right, and the circular stage in the middle of the audience). The performances are rotated among these stages all night long. This means that each stage is struck and reset multiple times through the night. Over and over again, the technical team gets each stage ready in a very short amount of time. If you’ve ever spent 3 hours setting up your band and still had things go wrong, you will appreciate what it must mean to clear a stage and reset it in 20 minutes or less. It’s like a pit stop at the Indianapolis 500 – precision and speed.

There is more evidence of the importance of teamwork at the Grammy’s:

• The bandmates, songwriters, and producers who join the winner on stage are essential to their success.
• There is an orchestra playing at many points in the show. They back up some performers, play for the entrance of the people giving out the awards, and play for every commercial break in the telecast. This year, the orchestra was hidden from view during the telecast. Imagine everything that’s needed to coordinate this music!
• Sound engineers are mixing the show on the fly. At the beginning of each performance, they’re making adjustments in seconds.
• When a Grammy winner thanks the Recording Academy, they are referencing the thousands of unnamed studio musicians, arrangers, engineers, songwriters, copyists, and others who keep the industry humming along.

Who is on your team?

7. Do What You Love to Do

The music industry is a marketplace of niches. Country fans never listen to hip hop. Hard rock musicians never play jazz. EDM producers could care less about Broadway. Sirius, Spotify, and Pandora have more genres than most people have ever thought about.

You can use this to your advantage. There is room for what you do in this marketplace, and you could even create a new genre. You can follow your own aesthetic and find a fan base for what you do.

This lesson is sort of an “anti-Grammy telecast” lesson. There were 84 Grammy awards given in 2018. The vast, vast majority of these were not part of the televised show. They weren’t even mentioned in print at the bottom of your TV screen. These other awards cover all sorts of genres and activities in the music world that are interesting, relevant, and compelling. You could become a successful performing and recording artist even if you’ll never have a shot at Song of the Year.

8. Things Will Go Wrong

In the music industry, you’ve got to expect technical snafu’s from time to time. These issues are inevitable. You’ve got to learn to roll with them.

At this year’s Grammy’s things went surprisingly well. Most of the technical coordination went off without a hitch. Here are three technical problems that were noticeable:

• At the beginning of the Las Vegas shooting tribute by Maren Morris, Eric Church, and Brothers Osborne, several vocal microphones were still live from whatever had happened previously on stage. You could hear conversation which was quickly turned off. Then, when Morris began to sing, her microphone needed to be brought up to an audible level and it was full of reverb. The sound engineer quickly made the adjustments and all was well.
• Pink’s in-ear monitor cable was taped to the back of her neck (a trick used by many performers, including news anchors). How do I know this? Because I saw the tape when an errant camera angle showed her from behind. It’s like seeing how the sausage is made. As performers, we want to hide our tricks from our audiences, not reveal them on an international TV broadcast.
• SZA had an issue with her in-ear monitor. It seemed like it wasn’t properly placed in her ear. She reached up to adjust it, and at one point it came out of her ear. At the beginning of her performance she was clearly distracted, and her pitch was affected. This was an unfortunate technical issue for an amazing performer. Sorry to see it happen.

Do everything you can to minimize technical glitches. And, at the same time, know that occasionally something will not go as planned.

9. There Are Many Paths to Success

I was struck by the acceptance speeches of Bruno Mars and Kendrick Lamar. These artists are clearly compelled by different forces to create what they create. At the same time, they are both totally committed to what they create – even though their aesthetics couldn’t be more different. They each have expansive worldviews, just not the same worldview.

Here they are in their own words:

From Kendrick Lamar’s acceptance speech for Best Rap Album: “(Hip hop) showed me a true definition of what being an artist was. From the jump, I thought it was about the accolades and the cars and the clothes. But, it’s really about expressing yourself and putting that paint on the canvas for the world to evolve for the next listener and the next generation after that.”

Bruno Mars, accepting the Best Album award: “I remember seeing it firsthand, people dancing that had never met each other from two sides of the globe, dancing with each other, toasting with each other, celebrating together. All I wanted to do with this album was that. Those songs were written with nothing but joy and for one reason and for one reason only: and that’s love. And that’s all I wanted to bring with this album. And, hopefully I could feel that again and see everybody dancing and everybody moving.”

What compels you to make music? Whatever that is, explore it and follow your inspiration to see what you can create. By being true to yourself, you not only have a better chance of being successful, but you’ll also enjoy the uncountable hours of work needed to make it in today’s music industry.