2023 Grammys: Historic wins, disappointing losses, and spirited moments Music’s biggest—and most tantalizing—night revels in controversy

Naomi Gupta

Contributor

Packed with A to Z-list celebrities, the 65th Grammy Awards took place at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, hosted by comedian Trevor Noah for the third consecutive year. After the last few editions saw a disappointing mix of bad nominations and even worse wins (remember when Billie Eilish took home all four main category awards in 2020?), music’s biggest event boasted an exciting night of competition between chart-dominating artists and ignited a conversation about lack of diversity.

When nominations were announced, headlines buzzed over the contenders for top prizes. Despite some of Beyoncé’s past snubs, she took the lead with nine Grammy nominations in three of the four main categories, tying with none other than Jay-Z for the title of most nominated artist of all time. The singer won two Grammys for “Break my Soul” and RENAISSANCE , officially making history as the most decorated artist at the Grammys. Other groundbreaking moments included Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ Best Pop Duo/Group Performance win for their hit “Unholy,” making Petras the first transgender woman to be honoured with the award.

In response to criticism of the Recording Academy regarding the lack of diversity in award categories, nominees, and recipients, this year’s nominations suggested lim- ited progress in a newer direction. The decision to introduce categories such as “Música Urbana Album” shows an effort to slowly address the assumptions that English music is the norm—as evidenced by the Grammy subtitle dubbing Bad Bunny as “singing in non-English”. Likewise, the Academy’s recurring pattern of relegating the work of Black artists to Rap/R&B categories, thereby excluding them from major, pop-focused categories, makes these efforts performative.

Throughout the last few years, the Grammys felt more like a three-hour showcase of the same two artists sweeping through most, if not all, of the main category awards. Luckily, this trend was broken this year—most of the awards seemed evenly distributed amongst headlining nominees: Lizzo’s hit single, “About Damn Time,” won Record of the Year, and Adele’s “Easy On Me” was recognized for Best Pop Solo Performance.

However, the ceremony did not go without its usual snubs. Despite its absence from the Billboard Hot 100, Song of the Year went to Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That”—a surprising moment for Grammy viewers and the categories’ other nominees. Fans predicted Taylor Swift to have this award in the bag for her record-breaking track “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which would’ve made this her first-ever win in the category.

The ceremony concluded with the night’s biggest award—Album of the Year. This highly-anticipated moment brought fans, quite literally, to the edge of their seats. A group comprising each nominee’s biggest fans took the stage in hopes of seeing their favourite artist awarded the top prize. Harry Styles’ Harry’s House won the award, and Styles delivered a tearful acceptance speech. He took a moment to thank his fans, family, and team before admitting how grateful he was, as “this doesn’t happen to people like [him] very often.” This particular line sparked controversy among Grammy viewers and sent the media into a frenzy. While some argued that this line referenced Styles’ modest upbringing and journey into the entertainment industry, others questioned the extent to which this was true, given that the music industry’s structure exhaustively prioritizes young, attractive, privileged white men.

Overall, the Grammys made for a highly entertaining evening, celebrating a diversity of artists and genres who impacted music in 2022. Although many don’t take the Grammys seriously anymore, the discourse it generates still has a lasting impact on the music industry. Considering its important media coverage and nationwide attention, the Recording Academy must continue to address the structural inequities that fail music and artists time and time again.

‘La Flambeau’: The torchbearer of Montréal’s Black art scene

Celebrating Black History Month at the opera with David Bontemps

Iman Brown Contributor

Content Warning: Mentions of sexual assault

Are you looking for a way to celebrate Black History Month? Do you enjoy opera? How about living something that feels like a fever dream? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, look no further than Montreal’s very own production of La Flambeau by the National Academy Orchestra (NAO) Chamber Players.

La Flambeau, the magnum opus of composer David Bontemps and librettist Faubert Bolivar, celebrates traditional Afro-Haitian music, lore, and spirituality. The opera is rife with power imbalances, monologues dripping with raw emotion, and abuses most abominable in nature. Bontemps honours Black History Month with an all-Black cast and production team to bring Black artists and performers to the forefront.

Through their conception of La Flambeau, Bontemps and Bolivar pay homage to their Afro-Creole heritage. The musical score expertly weaves classical Western opera with Haitian percussion, pentatonic and wholetone scales, and blues notes. Reaching beyond the confines that characterize European opera, Bontemps’ decision to include Afro-Creole themes politically counters what opera can and should be. The composite of styles celebrates Haiti’s spiritual roots in West Africa while inadvertently reckoning with its devastating colonial history with France.

The set only consists of a chaise longue, a podium, a small bookshelf, and a raised platform. Despite its modesty, the pieces complemented each other beautifully and never stole the audience’s attention away from the actors. Instead, the demure set highlighted the stars’ performances, allowing them to move naturally about the stage with a minimalist authenticity that many performances often lack.

The venue is part of Berri-UQAM’s campus, and does not lack incredible staff. The refreshment service, venue staff, and organizational team were kind, communicative, and considerate beyond measure, taking great care to ensure that all spectators were welltreated and comfortable.

Introduced first is Monsieur (Paul Williamson, tenor), a corrupt statesman and cruel husband. Monsieur laments the mental instability of his wife, Madame (Catherine Daniel, mezzo-soprano), who relays her restless night after being visited by a vision of her long-dead uncle. Finding his wife’s behaviour disconcerting, Monsieur returns to his political scheming. Mademoiselle (Suzanne Taffot, soprano), their maid, enters stage right and begins to pine for her lost ring, revealed to have belonged to the spirit Loa Papa Ogou, also known as L’Homme (Brandon Coleman, baritone bass). Monsieur consoles her and in a fit of vile lust, assaults her.

Few things could have prepared me for this scene. Despite the story being fictional, I felt a tug of nausea in my gut and a tightness in my throat.

Mademoiselle staggers, crumpling to her knees, and collapses into her grief. Taffot’s voice, sharp and clear as glass, cuts straight through to the audience like a blast of cold wind. Mademoiselle’s grief hangs pregnant in the air and swells with each word.

Monsieur falls asleep and enters a dream realm where he encounters the Loa, Ogou, who condemns him for his many crimes. Madame holds Mademoiselle’s head in her lap and shares the horrific abuses she experienced living with Monsieur. The opera concludes with the two women, both victims of Monsieur, sharing a moment of compassion and tenderness in such a bleak story.

Williamson’s depiction of the lecherous, lout Monsieur was so convincing that it proved difficult not to hate him. By contrast, Taffot’s sweet demeanour onstage was the picture of innocence. Daniel carried herself

Junk on Earth: A fun premise falls flat

Netflix’s new mockumentary series is a poorly executed dud

Charlotte Bawol Contributor

If you are chronically online, odds are you have seen clips over the past few months of Diane Morgan’s character Philomena Cunk from the Netflix mockumentary Cunk on Earth. The most notable of these soundbites went viral on TikTok and features Morgan’s character asking Oxford art history professor Martin Kemp, “which was more culturally significant: The Renaissance or Single Ladies by Beyoncé?” The pre-release hype surrounding the series, which premiered Jan. 31, prompted great anticipation in me—so much excitement that I decided to become a television critic for a day.

In five half-hour episodes, the show ambitiously promises to retrace the entire history of human civilization. Through interviews with academics and narrated walks across historical sights, our socially unaware, dim-witted narrator Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan) ultimately failed to make me do anything but blow air out of my nose slightly harder than usual.

My biggest gripe with the series is that the premise could have been better executed—instead, it just feels like a misspend of who knows how many millions of Netflix’s dollars. If only some of the money spent on shooting on location could have been invested in paying some decent comedy writers, I don’t think I would be here writing this review. A sizable gap in the humour comes from the time Cunk wastes asking guests idiotic questions. Before anyone argues that that is exactly the point of the show, I would contend that while there are some funny moments in the interviews, most of the segments are wasted on jokes that do not land.

The Sacha Baron Cohen–esque humour that Cunk attempts is only funny in the context of secrecy and unassuming participants. Cunk on Earth’s version feels too scripted, and the expert reactions do not mesh with Cunk’s attempts at levity. This is apparent in the section on the Olympic games, where Cunk interviews Dr. Lindsay Coo, a senior lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at the University of Bristol. Cunk launches into a mini tirade about the audience at the first Olympic games being able to see “right up their (athletes’) bumholes” (since athletes were competing naked), to which Coo doesn’t really have any significant reaction. The lewd quality of this joke is the rule rather than the exception with the humour in this documentary. Perhaps the jokes might have landed better if the audience was better introduced to Philomena Cunk as a character, or if the expert’s reactions, while they were being interviewed, were less contrived. But, in its current form, the interviews feel like a repetitive misuse of audience time and expert talent.

The documentary reaches a point of diminishing returns with Cunk’s attempts at situational humour. In the fourth episode of the series, “Rise of the Machines,” Cunk interviews Jonathan Ferguson, keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries. She spends actual airtime asking him what would happen if she looked straight down the barrel of the gun, and very cleverly questioning the idea of the American Constitution protecting the right to bear arms— since bears don’t have arms (Philomena, we all heard this joke in 2006).

In her full interview with Kemp, she with a dignified grandeur, while Coleman’s voice can only be described as both decadent and profound. asks about the “renaissauce”, and with medieval historian Laura Ash of the University of Oxford, about the “darkages” instead of the Dark Ages. For McGill students, Cunk reminds me of those peers in your lecture who just cannot help but annoy the class with their blend of confidence and stupidity, the ones that make you wonder, “are they actually still talking right now?”

La Flambeau is a story of love, compassion, justice, retribution, and resilience. By testing the possibility of Black feminist solidarity to overcome violence, the opera provides the audience with a much-needed dose of women supporting women through Madame’s warmth and generosity toward Mademoiselle. Even with its distance from reality and displays of human cruelty, one cannot help but feel a closeness and intimacy with the characters while bearing witness.

‘La Flambeau’ premiered in Montreal on Feb. 7, 2023 at Salle Pierre-Mercure and will be touring Hamilton, Ontario next.

Some of the dry humour, however, did make me laugh. For example, Cunk describes the guillotine as “the most humane way to decapitate someone in front of a jeering crowd” and explains to her audience that Jesus Christ became a carpenter since he was named after the two words one is most likely to utter after hitting their finger with a hammer. From Jesus to Louis XVI, she runs the gamut of human civilization, as promised, but fails to touch on any interesting aspects.

Ultimately, the heartening opportunity to produce something that is both educational and comedic was thrown away. Cunk on Earth is best consumed through shortened TikTok clips, as watching it in its entirety feels like a waste of time.