Last night (February 2), the Weeknd showed up at the Grammy Awards to perform "Cry for Me" and "Timeless" from his newly released album, Hurry Up Tomorrow. On its surface, there was nothing unusual about the moment — it was simply one of the world's foremost pop stars, a four-time Grammy winner, participating in music's biggest night.
But the appearance was charged with significance due to the Weeknd's four-year boycott of the Grammys, stemming from when he called the awards show "corrupt" for snubbing his smash 2020 album After Hours. The comeback performance was introduced by Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., who detailed the changes the Grammys have made to its voting body.
"We have completely re-made our membership, adding more than 3,000 women voting members," he said. "The Grammy electorate is now younger, nearly 40 percent people of colour, and 66 percent of our members are new since we started our transformation." He called it "a system rooted in fairness, integrity, and the principle that every voice in our community matters."
Judging by the results of last night's ceremony, it worked.
In category after category, the prize went to fresh and deserving artists: Doechii won Best Rap Album for her excellent Alligator Bites Never Heal, beating out odds-on favourite Eminem; Kendrick Lamar's seething diss track "Not Like Us" won both Song of the Year and Record of the Year, categories that last year went to dull dentist waiting room jams by Miley Cyrus and Billie Eilish.
Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Chappell Roan are all Grammy winners now, proving that the ceremony is tapped into the latest wave of blockbuster pop and not simply honouring the established legacy artists its fuddy-duddy voters have actually heard of. Taylor Swift was mercifully shut out for last year's bloated The Tortured Poets Department, prizes instead going to less famous but more deserving acts.
Speaking of established legacy artists, one of the night's biggest stories was that Beyoncé finally won Album of the Year after four previous nominations. Her "always a bridesmaid, never the bride" status in the Album Year category was infamous, marked by outrageous miscarriages of justice like the time fucking Harry's House beat RENAISSANCE in 2023.
The album that finally won, COWBOY CARTER, obviously didn't deserve it. BRAT was 2024's zeitgeist-defining album, and the fact that Charli XCX performed just before Album of the Year was handed out reinforced the impression that she was the deserving choice.
And yet, as a mea culpa, Beyoncé's victory felt like the righting of a historical wrong — a way for the Grammys to celebrate its most-decorated award recipient by giving her its most prestigious prize.
The Grammys' work isn't done, of course. In particular, the rock categories were grim, with the Rolling Stones laughably winning Best Rock Album and the Beatles nabbing Best Rock Performance for their AI song "Now and Then." St. Vincent curiously earned three awards for All Born Screaming — a perfectly fine album that's far inferior to most of her back catalogue, but was up in weak categories including artists like Cage the Elephant and the Black Keys.
And the ceremony was far, far too long. In a show that was more than three hours long, the last thing I needed was a smug Will Smith giving a rambling tribute to Quincy Jones that was really just an excuse to brag about how well he treats people on film sets.
But, as a course correction from a prize long considered out of touch, the 67th Grammys showed that its organizational changes have had the intended effect, coming closer to an actual representation of the year's best music.