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Give it up for the team behind the 2025 Grammys. Amazing winners — finally, Beyoncé takes home Album of the Year! — and the CBS team admirably focused the telecast on the recovery efforts for the Los Angeles fires and movingly showed how crucial the area is to the music industry, right from the jump.
“This city has just been through one of the largest natural disasters in American history,” host Trevor Noah said in his opening remarks during the February 2 ceremony in L.A. “Los Angeles is where Billie Eilish and Finneas turned a small bedroom in Highland Park into a Grammy-winning studio. The clubs of LA inspired Chappell Roan to create the anthem that is ‘Pink Pony Club.’ … To kick off the show, let me tell you about a band that has L.A. in their DNA.”
Noah went on to tell the audience at home about Dawes, an L.A. band that lost everything in the fires and since then, has worked to help over 100 other families who lost everything as well. Their performance of “I Love L.A.,” featuring a backing band including John Legend, Sheryl Crow, St. Vincent, and Brad Paisley, kicked the ceremony off on a happily resilient note.
Noah then explained an on-screen QR code that appeared throughout the night for people at home to donate to MusiCares Fire Relief, in partnership with Direct Relief, the California Community Foundation, and the Pasadena Community Foundation. (At the end of the evening, Noah noted that $7 million had been raised so far.) Noah brought up the code throughout the evening, and many presenters and winners — including Kendrick Lamar — shouted out the perseverance of the area in their speeches.
Money is, of course, critical, and Noah hammering the CEOs and corporations at the ceremony to donate was worth a few chuckles. (The QR code was also apparently available at all the star-packed tables at the show as well, all the better to encourage nominees and winners to open their wallets, too.) But the smartest move the telecast made was getting CBS to donate ad air time. With that space, various L.A. small businesses got a national commercial, each with a music celeb (Doja Cat, Anderson .Paak, Avril Lavigne) visiting individual stores in places like Pasadena and Altadena and directing viewers to the respective store website — for flowers, martial arts, African cultural goods, and more. It was a savvy way to bring home the everyday people affected by the tragedy, and a more direct way to help.
It’s been an open question how the Academy will handle the Oscars on March 2 — and everyone’s got opinions on the best way for host Conan O’Brien and team to move forward. Here’s an easy one: They should take a page from the Grammy playbook, and do something similar to highlight small businesses, with help from some of the most recognizable faces in the world. It’s not quite full telethon, but it allows the rest of the evening to be celebratory while also doing some genuine good.
Another savvy move? At the end of the evening, the Grammys brought some of the L.A. firefighters onstage to present the Album of the Year honor to Beyoncé. The Emmys made a similar choice with first responders during the height of COVID, and it seems like a no-brainer moving choice for Team Oscars going forward.
The Academy Awards are a month away, and both the L.A. fires and the world are facing rapidly changing situations, to say the least. But as the first of the so-called Big Four awards coming after the fires, the Recording Academy and telecast producers deserve their kudos for centering the destruction while also celebrating the resilience of the people and the area. Entertainment figures love to say they’re helping — on Sunday night, music’s biggest showed how to do just that.
English (US) ·