Oh, sure–Adele would be an easy (and worthy) choice after cleaning up on the Grammy Awards last night and blowing the windows out with her surgically repaired vocal cords, but I thought that was too obvious.
There was a lot to like, really–starting with Bonnie Raitt and Alicia Keys’ tribute to Etta James, or maybe a little Willie Nelson doing Coldplay to animation about modern farming, the Foo Fighters rocked and Dave Grohl gave the best acceptance speech of the night, and Taylor Swift did my favorite song of hers (playing the banjo!) and got a standing O. I’m sure someone liked the trainwreck that Nicki Minaj put together (though I can’t say who or why)–but even with all of that to choose from, after the opening, I was all set to open up this morning with some LL Cool J in honor of the masterful job he did with the delicate job of MC (please note, I did not call it a ‘comeback’), but that was before the performance of the night.
Jennifer Hudson was miraculous. I can’t believe she had the courage to sing that song and then to sing it like that…mercy.
South Side represents!
The Harold Lounge 