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The 2024 Grammys Was an All-Time Great Awards Show (With One Big Exception)

This year’s Grammys had everything properly represented — massive stars, classic performances, historic wins, unforgettable moments — except for the biggest genre in popular music…

The artists who’d defined the previous year in music were basically all present and accounted for: six of Billboard ‘s top seven picks for the Greatest Pop Stars of 2023 were in the building, with Morgan Wallen (whose relationship with the Recording Academy remains understandably frayed) the lone holdout. Executive producer Ben Winston had mentioned to the Associated Press that he’d raised the idea of an a “ladies’ night” at the Grammys with an all-female roster of performers and rightly been shot down; such a heavy-handed setup would’ve felt wildly unnecessary when the women present were clearly more than capable of controlling the evening regardless. You could see it in the cutaways to the folks (again, mostly women) in attendance, perhaps best in the fighting-back-tears shot of acting GOAT Meryl Streep and daughter Grace Gummer, no doubt reflecting the reactions of thousands of mother-daughter viewer pairs watching from home.

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