The 2019 Grammys made for some great TV, but also featured some bad optics

The Ringer

"Whether you love to hate the Grammys or hate to love them, everyone went home happy Sunday night—crawled home, maybe," says Rob Harvilla. "Music’s Biggest Night was also its longest, and most punishing and confounding, albeit spiked with bracing jolts of pure surrealist delight. After a mostly disastrous 2018 ceremony—in which only one woman won a televised solo award, the sole female Album of the Year nominee (poor Lorde) skipped the ceremony in protest, and (recording academy president Neil) Portnow mused afterward that music-biz sexism could only be conquered if women learned to 'step up'—this year’s Grammys were meant to be an explicit course correction, an apology tour, a miniseries-length do-over. It didn’t go perfectly; it arguably didn’t go particularly well. Nonetheless, the visible, flop-sweating, teeth-gritting effort, even at its most hapless, made for some lousy optics but some great television."

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