By Ben Sisario
On Jan. 8, as wildfires were spreading across Los Angeles, Harvey Mason Jr., head of the Grammy Awards, looked out the window of his home in the Hollywood Hills and saw smoke everywhere. “Grab a bag,” he told his wife, and they headed east to Arizona. Throughout the six-hour drive, Mason said, he was in calls to coordinate relief efforts and raise money for music professionals through MusiCares, the Grammys’ affiliated charity.
The next order of business was the Grammy ceremony itself.
The 67th annual show, scheduled for Feb. 2, was then a little over three weeks away, and questions were starting to percolate about the choice faced by the Recording Academy and Mason, its CEO. Fires were still raging, including in areas such as Pacific Palisades and Altadena, where many in the music industry had lost their homes. Would going forward with a glitzy, celebrity-filled awards show come across as tone-deaf and insensitive to people’s suffering? Was it even safe? Or could a retooled Grammy ceremony serve as a needed symbol of perseverance for Los Angeles?
Mason and the academy decided that the show would go on, betting that by early February the fires would be sufficiently tamed, and that the music community — and television audiences across the country — would be ready for the Grammys, still with all its spectacle but also a somber new purpose to help rebuild Los Angeles.
“Postponing the show for me didn’t feel like the right thing for the city of Los Angeles,” Mason said in an interview. “We wanted to make sure that we showed a resilience and strength and unity in a time when I thought we were going to really, really need it.”
In many ways Sunday’s show, to be broadcast live by CBS and streamed on Paramount+, has the hallmarks of a classic Grammy night, with star power and crisscrossing narratives about the state of pop music. Beyoncé is the top nominee, with 11 nods, and after four failed attempts in the past could finally win album of the year for “Cowboy Carter,” her high-concept stew of country, R&B, rock and even opera.
Her competition in the top categories includes Taylor Swift, who announced her megahit album “The Tortured Poets Department” at the mic during last year’s Grammys; Kendrick Lamar, whose “Not Like Us” was the breakout track in a dis war with Drake (and is now the centerpiece of Drake’s defamation suit against the label behind both rappers); Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, young women who together dominated last year’s charts with sharp, provocative pop.
But the show’s success is far from guaranteed, and a current of dissent about Mason’s decision still flows through the industry. Many leading music companies privately lobbied Mason to postpone or move the show, and soon after the Grammys announced their plan to move forward, the major record labels all canceled their Grammy-week parties. Industry insiders say they are worried that the event could be an unnecessary drain on emergency resources and — perhaps even more important for the image-obsessed entertainment world — would end up a public relations disaster.
“America already feels a certain way about Hollywood,” said Lucas Keller, the founder of Milk & Honey, a music and sports management company, who early on canceled his Grammy party. “Us having an award show while this is going on, it just felt like the wrong thing.”
Mason said the Grammys consulted a range of state and local public authorities before making the decision, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and the office of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and were assured that holding the show would not be a burden on relief efforts.
“We were hearing from almost everybody, to a person, that they strongly suggested that we continue forward with hosting the event,” Mason said. “Everyone said there’s nothing good that comes from postponing.”
Moving or postponing the Grammys is a daunting and expensive undertaking in itself, as the academy learned twice during the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a delay to the 2021 show and a move to Las Vegas the next year. To set up, rehearse and put on the event — which typically involves about a dozen staged performance segments — the Grammys require use of a major arena for about 12 days at a time. Its annual booking at the Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles, negotiated with the venue and with the NBA and the NHL, which have resident teams there, is almost impossible to quickly replicate elsewhere.
Ben Winston, one of the three executive producers of the show, was coy about revealing any details about the adjusted ceremony, which will be hosted by Trevor Noah. But he said it would pay tribute to firefighters and other emergency workers, and “make LA a character in the night of Grammys.”
“It will still be the Grammy Awards,” Winston said. “We are still looking back at an incredible year of music. We are still having performances that we would have had when we were planning the show on Jan. 1. But of course we’re reflecting now on what’s going on in Los Angeles.”
The wider awards business, which was just kicking off its 2025 cycle when the fires broke out, will have its eyes on the Grammys for signs of what works and doesn’t. News can drive eyeballs to tent-pole television. One of the Grammys’ most-watched years was 2012, when the ceremony went on barely 24 hours after Whitney Houston died. Winston rejected the comparison, saying he expected no ratings bump. (For one thing, the Grammys delayed their usual advertising blitz this year.) But he said that music can play a special role in trying times.
“I’m not sure that in a moment of disaster you are running to your streaming platforms to watch a movie,” Winston said. “You are listening to the music that comforts you, warms you, moves you. And I think the Grammys, and music in general, has a place more than ever at a time when people are going through strife.”
The Grammys have announced performances by Eilish, Roan, Carpenter, Charli XCX, Shakira, buzzy rapper Doechii, rock singer Benson Boone and others. A tribute to Quincy Jones, the super-producer who died at 91 last year, with 28 career Grammys — topped only by Beyoncé (32) and classical conductor Georg Solti (31) — is also planned. Winston suggested that the opening of the show, and moments like award presentations and commercial segues, could highlight the situation in Los Angeles.
Fundraising appeals will be threaded through the show, though Mason said producers were being careful not to devote too much of the night into an appeal for money: “It’s a fundraiser, but it’s not going to be a telethon.”
So far, the Grammys and MusiCares, which supports music professionals in need, have raised and pledged $3.9 million in emergency relief to people in the music industry who have been affected by the wildfires. Money raised during the ceremony will go to MusiCares as well as to organizations that support relief for the whole region.
Comments