So do they go ahead and give out the GRAMMY AWARDS on Sunday as if this were any old week in any old year? Does host ALICIA KEYS talk about the power of music and the magic of the moment as if there weren't a galactic shadow hanging over the moment? Do LIZZO and BILLIE EILISH thank their families and collaborators and agents and managers and then run to the press room and pray for questions about how their next albums are coming along? Does ARIANA GRANDE shut up and sing? Does TAYLOR SWIFT have thoughts about the boys' club in charge of the evening clattering around her brain? Do some artists linger in their seats wondering about the provenance of their nominations? Will the theme of the night be "Truth Hurts"? "If You See Something, Say Something"? "Enjoy the Silence"? Will the bars be adequately stocked? Would it be better to not go through with this exercise at all? I'm not the first to suggest this, but what if they just canceled the 2020 Grammys, like they canceled the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature? What if they replaced the awards with a three-hour show of nothing but performances, lots and lots of them by women, a tribute to the power of music unsullied by the need for winners and losers? (Or how about Lizzo singing "TRUTH HURTS" for three hours straight?) How about an extended, three-hour performance of JOHN CAGE's "4:33," giving the industry and TV viewers a chance to spend that time listening to the sound of the room, which no doubt will be restless and loud? How about a three-hour televised jam session, everyone (rappers, pop stars, jazz musicians, blues guitarists, classical maestros) playing together instead of competing with one another? Or three hours of clips of great performances from Grammys past? Artists, of course, wait all year, sometimes all their lives, for this moment, and canceling the Grammys would cancel—temporarily anyway—a lot of dreams. Labels wait all year for the business the Grammys can bring them (but is the Grammy bump overrated?). But maybe this isn't a year for dreams and streams. Maybe it's a year for a reset. For self-examination. For facing the music. MusicSET: "Grammy Wars: New CEO Steps Up, Recording Academy Asks Her to Step Down"... Alicia Keys is the best host of any televised awards show right now, by far, and if anyone can pilot this particular show through this particular moment, it's she. Everyone at NARAS and in the recorded music business should send her flowers this weekend... Embattled Grammy boss DEOBRAH DUGAN will appear on ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA this morning. This story is not going to disappear between now and Sunday. It's going to get louder... The RINGER's BILL SIMMONS, who co-created ESPN's documentary series 30 FOR 30, is developing a music doc series with HBO. "We don’t want to make music docs that just cover the beginning, middle and end of someone’s career," Simmons says. "We think there’s a different way to do these"... AMAZON MUSIC says it has 55 million users worldwide... JUICE WRLD died from an accidental overdose... RIP CLAUDIO RODITI, BARRY TUCKWELL and MARK YEARY.
