Grammys 2024: Winners You've Probably Never Heard

A few numbers not boosted in prime time, plus the Joni and Tracy highlights, and Annie Lennox's fist of fury.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see link) and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org. Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

So here’s my annual Day After the Grammys (which I claim I don’t really care about), again focusing on songs and winners not featured in primetime ceremony and maybe greater than most of what you heard last night, if you did watch or graze.

If you missed entirely: the highlights for many of us who are OK with being Boomers were the Tracy Chapman surprise and the much anticipated Joni Mitchell comeback (see cartoon below), plus for some of us, Annie Lennox closing her Sinead tribute (also below) with a raised fist and call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Isn’t it amazing that she was the only one to dare to do that when dozens of younger artists, and older ones, paraded on and off stage without a word? OK, Boomer.

Among many cringe-inducing moments was Stevie Wonder singing “The Best Is Yet to Come”—what a message—to introduce the In Memoriam section. Stevie also struggled with vocals but the Jon Batiste/BillWithers number was so shrill you had to wonder if they had any time to rehearse. Well, at least Travis Scott got through his medley without anyone in the crowd getting killed. Oh, too soon? Reporter for New York Times today actually complained that his performance last night was “oddly bloodless.”

Here’s “Fast Car” duet, full take here.

Video quality could be better, but here’s Joni last night. No lip-sync nor auto-tuning, and with Allison Russell on clarinet and backing vocals.

Earlier, I had nothing better to do for a half hour or so in the afternoon so found online the live coverage of some of the cool categories with many people I admired as nominees. Blues, gospel, etc. Yes, folks like Tracy Nelson and Rhiannon Giddons did not win, but faves Allison Russell and Jason Isbell did triumph in Americana or Roots categories. I’ve boosted Allison’s winner, “Eve Was Black,” here several times already, and we saw her do it live last December, so I’ll skip it now but you will find one of Jason’s new Grammy nods, below.

First, if you’ve never seen it, here’s the surprise “Best Video” winner, the animated short for The Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping.”

Next, the remarkable resurrection of over 100 demos from the 1960s for Stax Records took two awards, here is just one sample, “Respect Yourself,” which would be memorably covered by the Staples but here growled by the less known co-writer Mack Rice.

Here’s the promised Isbell off his winning Americana album, “White Beretta.”

Larkin Poe, winners in Contemporary Blues.

Renowned songwriter Brandy Clark won best Americana song for “Dear Insecurity,” which featured Brandi Carlile.

An artist we featured here not long ago, young guitar/singer flash Molly Tuttle, took home the major prize in Bluegrass, so here’s “Yosemite” (with Dave Matthews) from her latest.

We are big fans of the unique vocal stylings and blendings of the classical-related vocal group Room Full of Teeth, and we’ve even seen them perform live with ace composer Caroline Shaw. Here, like nothing else you’ll hear today, from their winning album:

Well, let’s close with a song you have probably have actually heard already, from boygenius, who exploded this year. Kind of amazed this particular song from them won, may seem rather….generic…to some….

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see link) and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org.