This 12 months’s Grammys doubled as an awards ceremony and a fund-raising attraction to help these affected by the wildfires in Southern California, striving to strike a steadiness between glitzy celebration and somber affair.
Trevor Noah, the ceremony’s host, opened the present by noting the devastation of the fires and the resilience of Los Angeles earlier than introducing a efficiency of Randy Newman’s music “I Love L.A.” by the band Dawes, whose members misplaced properties, their studio and lots of devices within the fires. They have been joined by John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, Brittany Howard and St. Vincent.
Presenters and winners wove in references to the fires onstage. In a single poignant second earlier than presenting greatest pop vocal album, Anthony Kiedis and Chad Smith of Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers mirrored on the fires, singing an a cappella snippet from their music “Below the Bridge.” “Typically I really feel like my solely good friend is the town I dwell in, the Metropolis of Angels,” they sang. “Lonely as I’m, collectively we cry.”
The telecast additionally featured ads for Los Angeles-area companies that have been affected by the fires, together with a section for the destroyed Orla Floral Studio that featured the rapper Doja Cat serving to out within the flower store’s non permanent house.
The ceremony happened someday after Cal Fireplace introduced that the Eaton and Palisades fires, which killed not less than 29 folks, razed neighborhoods and displaced hundreds of Los Angeles-area residents, have been one hundred pc contained greater than three weeks after they started.
The night time’s fund-raising will profit the MusiCares Fireplace Reduction fund, with cash going to the Grammys charity MusiCares, which helps musicians in want within the Los Angeles space. It can additionally help the California Neighborhood Basis and the Pasadena Neighborhood Basis, which can disburse fireplace help to native nonprofit teams.
Performances through the premiere ceremony and the televised present, the place the foremost awards are given out, featured tributes to responding firefighters and to the town of Los Angeles. On the purple carpet, celebrities and members of the Los Angeles County Fireplace Division stood in entrance of promoting appeals for on-line donations.
On Thursday, the unaffiliated profit live performance FireAid, which featured performances from Billie Eilish and Joni Mitchell, raised greater than $60 million for short-term reduction efforts and longer-term preventative initiatives.