56th Grammy Awards

By Carly Woolley |Staff Writer|

The 56th GRAMMY Awards Ceremony has surprised its viewers by only awarding 10 trophies on television, leaving 72 awards to be awarded off air during a pre-telecast ceremony.

This year’s ceremony was held on Sunday, Jan. 26, at the Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles.

This was a star studded event full of surprisingly unexpected moments from multiple presenters and performers.

The night started off with an exciting performance by the music industry’s reigning power couple, Beyoncé and Jay Z. The couple performed a sensational rendition of Beyoncé’s recent single, “Drunk in Love.”

Audiences were left wanting more of the power couple.

Every year, the GRAMMYs continually become less of a celebration for the nominee’s success and more of a way to grab television ratings.

There were several attention grabbing performances throughout the night but there was one in particular that went above and beyond expectations. A performance of Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis’s equality anthem, “Same Love” was definitely one to stand out.

This performance included Madonna parachuting onto the stage to sing a few lines while Queen Latifah presided over a marriage ceremony that married 33 gay and straight couples.

A student, Marisa Damron, enjoyed watching Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love” performance. She said “I’ve never seen a performance like this before. There were so many amazing things going on at once.”

There was a surprising number of disappointing tribute performances in this year’s show.

Robin Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines” was granted the most-played song on the radio for the year 2013. But he was only allowed to lull a verse of it throughout his performance that was monopolized by past hits of other performers.

Ringo Starr was another highly anticipated performer for the show and sadly, his overall performance fell short of expectations. Starr decided to perform his solo tune, “Photograph” instead of a past Beatles tune.

After his solo performance, Starr was called back to the stage for an encore with Paul McCartney in effort to satisfy the audience’s desire for a taste of the Beatles.

This decision seemed to quickly backfire as the audience seemed quite bored after sitting through two lengthy performances from the past time era.

Daft Punk took home the top honors with the awards for record of the year for “Get Lucky,” with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers. They took the awards for best pop duo/group performance and dance/electronica album and album of the year for “Random Access Memories.”

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were also the top winners in the pre-telecast ceremony. They took home awards for best rap performance, rap song and rap album leaving them the talk of the night.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis upstaged their main competition Kendrick Lamar with seven nominations, and ultimately sent him home empty handed.

It is safe to say that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are not only on the rise, but they have reached the top.