The 56th Annual Grammy Awards aired last Sunday on CBS and a pair of robots from France took home both Record of the Year and Album of the Year.
The competition leading up to the Grammys was fierce, with Jay-Z receiving nine nominations and Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams all tied for seven.
Right out the gate, power couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé performed “Drunk in Love” in front of a packed house, with Beyoncé looking quite fierce for a mom who just gave birth a mere two years ago.
The performances were star-studded and action-packed throughout the evening, with some fascinating musical pairings from the most unexpected of artists.
While awards were given out between the songs—it is an awards show, after all—it felt like 90 percent of the Grammy Awards were given out earlier in the day, with the most popular of categories being reserved for primetime.
This could be confusing for viewers at home, for when certain artists were mentioned, the presenters would casually mention the artist in question had already won a Grammy for a not mentioned category earlier in that day, ultimately making us muggles who aren’t involved in the music industry feel out of the loop.
Lorde (Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor) won Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance for her hit song “Royals.” The 17-year-old New Zealander performed an eerie rendition of the song earlier in the show.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won Best New Artist, Best Rap Album (“The Heist”), Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance for the single “Thrift Shop.” Macklemore later went to Instagram to apologize to Kendrick Lamar for “robbing” him of the Best Rap Album Grammy.
“You got robbed. I wanted you to win. You should have. It’s weird and it sucks that I robbed you,” Macklemore wrote. Perhaps Lamar can find an old Grammy the next time he visits a thrift shop.
The real winners last night were Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams. Williams had a thumb in every pie in 2013 and because of it won Producer of the Year for his collaborations with Daft Punk, Robin Thicke, Jay-Z and Frank Ocean.
Both Williams and Daft Punk went home with Record of the Year (“Get Lucky”), Album of the Year (“Random Access Memories”) and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. Daft Punk also won Grammys in the Best Dance/Electronica Album and Best Engineered Album – Non-Classical categories.
It was an emotional moment for the robotic duo (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) upon winning Album of the Year, as they hugged for a good 10 seconds in their Stormtrooper-esque outfits, proving they were human after all.
Despite many artists being nominated for multiple categories, not all of them went home with arms filled with the coveted golden gramophone. Compton rapper Lamar didn’t win a single award that night.
While some artists performed solo or with their groups, it was the mash-ups that really shook things up.
Robin Thicke and the legendary Chicago performed a mash-up of “Saturday in the Park” and “Blurred Lines,” while Kendrick Lamar and Imagine Dragons had an awkward and bizarre rendition of “Radioactive” mixed with “M.A.A.D. City.”
Pink dazzled the audience with another acrobatic ribbon twirling performance that took place high above the crowd, while she simultaneously sang “Try” before coming down and performing “Just Give Me a Reason” with fun.’s Nate Ruess.
Ex-Beatles Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney reunited on stage for “Queenie Eye,” a new single off McCartney’s “New” album.
Daft Punk, Nile Rodgers, Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder performed “Get Lucky” with a little bit of “Le Freak” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” mixed-in, proving to be one of the more entertaining performances of the evening.
One of the final big performances of the evening turned out to be one of the most controversial.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performed “Same Love” and halfway through Queen Latifah came out and married 33 gay and straight couples in the audience as Madonna sang the chorus of “Open Your Heart” while wearing an outfit usually seen on Colonel Sanders.
Overall, the Grammys definitely provided some quality performances and surprising wins this year, but in the end, Daft Punk brought life back to music and showed that they were harder, better, faster, stronger around the world one more time.