Coldplay – Hymn for the Weekend
Coldplay wind music critics up with their sixth-form poetry, positive outlook and wealth, because we’re all impoverished, jaded and our sixth-form poetry was the last time we truly felt anything apart from antipathy towards James Bay’s hat. But actually, they’re not so bad as all that. They perform Hymn for the Weekend, which is the one with Beyoncé on, though she’s not about to upstage them again – generous! Instead their bald drummer sings her bit, and it doesn’t scream “fierce”, but no matter. With their tales of getting drunk and high, along with photos of sunsets, and flower garlands draped everywhere, this is like going round to the house of a 21-year-old after they’ve got back from their gap year: it’s a bit naff, but you nod along fitfully and smile.
Justin Bieber – Love Yourself/Sorry
Justin Bieber, rising like a phoenix in a drop-arm vest, is proof that you can do literally anything when you’re young and it doesn’t matter: crash your car, neglect a monkey, think Eenie Meenie is a viable follow-up single. He’s recording the best pop songs of the moment, bolstered with a redemption story, and if you’re one of the few people who still thinks he’s not a viable artist, pipe down and keep your stagnated personal growth to yourself. Unfortunately, tonight he’s performing Love Yourself, which is a good line in search of a song, and it’s compounded by the presence of James Bay, who is of use only for making a census of Britain’s most basic people from his Facebook likes. But luckily this passes, and it’s time for a bit of the beautiful Sorry around a campfire – in the ever-unfolding Bieber bildungsroman, this presumably represents the pyre of his old life, while the gyrating dancers acknowledge an undimmed libido. Probably. He saved the real A-game tracks for the Grammys, then, but it’s still probably better than most of the other performances this evening.
Jess Glynne – Ain’t Got Far to Go/Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself/Hold Your Hand
You know her from Rather Be, Hold My Hand, and her blurred sexuality confusing the Daily Mail. Channeling equal parts Grace Coddington and Sideshow Bob with a megashock of red hair, she does a trio of Ain’t Got Far to Go, Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself, and Hold Your Hand, she rather overestimates the audience’s knowledge of her lyrics, but the pipes are in good condition, and there’s something endearingly big-eyed and butterfly-chasing about her decidedly 90s dancepop. A pleasant throwback to middleweight Brits female stars such as Tina Cousins, Lisa Stansfield and Beverley Craven.
James Bay – Hold Back the River
Not since James Morrison has such a lovely voice been put to the service of such middling songs. But get your gravitational wave detectors out because the faintest of praise is incoming: Hold Back the River is his best, and its rousing gospel chorus cannot help but stir even the most Bay-resistant hack, even as it merely simulates religious-level feeling rather than actually living it. There’s a gigantic cheer for his efforts, despite them being only 1% more impassioned than the recorded version. The hat meanwhile, surely the product of a worried major label styling meeting to try to inject some temporary pizazz, has become the hair of Samson, a mysterious totem whose power cannot be fully understood. It’s a bit like the button in Lost – he dare not stop wearing it lest some catastrophe occur. Large parts of Clapham and Jack Wills warehouses might spontaneously collapse, perhaps.
Rihanna – Consideration/Work
Last year I ruined an entire morning’s work by repeatedly shouting “YASS QUEEN” at Rihanna, boobs hoisted to her hairline, doing Bitch Better Have My Money at the iHeartRadio awards show – the styling was Miss Saigon meets Rhythm Nation, and violent kleptocracies have been run with less scorn. Suffice to say my anticipation for this was high, and her missing the Grammys only heightened it. She performs Consideration as if through some partially open blinds in a strip club, seguing into Work for some heavily Bajan-accented gyration. She steamrolls its beautiful little “No one texts me in a crisis” line, but this is an awards show, and subtlety will always be smothered; her laziness in the chorus lines is made up for by nailing the jazzy delivery of the verses. This is Rihanna at her most free and unimpeded by expectation, for better and worse. Drake comes out to apply a defibrillation paddle to the pair’s by now rather stale sexual chemistry, but they gamely rut like a pair of Crufts champions who have disappointed their owners.
Little Mix – Black Magic
Jason Derulo suitors Little Mix here, who, in between providing the Sun’s Bizarre column with a stream of staggeringly unremarkable but at least regular content, make the occasional solid gold pop banger – of which Black Magic is undeniably one. It initially gets a exoticised voodoo-tribal update, which is swiftly dispensed for the chorus, which reverts to the perky fantasy-scribbled-on-A4-school-binder vibe of the original. There’s lots of floor-humping a la Destiny’s Child’s Survivor and equal amounts of Amazonian sass-power. Zero danger compared with Rihanna’s enjoyably loose performance, but if you like absolute steel-tipped professionalism, you’ll have clapped along delightedly.
Lorde’s Bowie tribute
Surely nothing will be worse than Lady Gaga’s well-meaning but misjudged tribute at the Grammys, which was like Liza Minnelli trying to shout off a bout of sleep paralysis; cruise missiles and Kanye tweets have connected with more subtlety that the segues between its songs. It was basically Hallo Spaceboy! The David Bowie Musical Jamboree (Coming to Broadway spring 2017), and only underlined how Bowie’s star quality had been made truly ineffable with his death. What can the Brits offer? Well, there is certainly nothing more quintessentially Brits than the words: “Please welcome Annie Lennox!” She pays testament to “a fixation in the British psyche” in a speech that straddles cliche and insight. The cut to Graham Coxon munching a canape takes the gloss off somewhat, but no matter, here’s Gary Oldman to join the remembrance. He is predictably articulate, picking a choice quote from Bowie on his own music: a “Sublime means of communication when I want to touch people; it has been both my doorway of perception and the house I live in.” Whether you think this public grief bomb needed to be detonated, it’s dignified. Clench for the music … and all is much better than the Grammys. Space Oddity begets Rebel Rebel begets Let’s Dance – it’s a megamix, but far more deftly handled (by Bowie’s own band, no less) than Gaga’s lurching. Lorde sings Life on Mars, and she can’t capture Bowie’s blend of music-hall singer and travelling bard – it’s a little breathily earnest and pedantic. But there’s still something sumptuous and soulful about her take, and again, it’s dignified. Is “dignified” too safe for Bowie? Well, he was never a punk – honesty and feeling is just right.
The Weeknd – The Hills
The wonderful Earned It turned the Weeknd from a pervert who induced Q4 jitters, to a viable Michael Jackson stooge going out with Bella Hadid, and as such vies with Bieber for the best international male career turnaround gong. He performs The Hills, which is textbook Weeknd: pitch-black, coke-bloated chirpsing drenched in distrust that leads, eventually, to dead-eyed sexual congress. The swear-bleep man cheerfully lets “I only fuck you when it’s half-past five” into ITV land, as the arrangement embraces the gnarliness with some ultra-heavy guitar and big smashed-glass visuals. It’s short but energetic and edifying, exactly unlike the intercourse it sounds like he indulges in.
Adele – When We Were Young
The problem with Adele’s Grammy performance wasn’t the twanging piano strings (negligible) or the tuning errors (miniscule), but rather her increasing tendency to project everything in a colourless, bleating cadence; where once she’d denote emotional complexity with a sudden coo or breath, now she’ll make some sassy hand gesture do the heavy lifting, like a young cousin losing an argument. Here she performs When We Were Young, which plays to her quivering low register and that lovely ruminative midrange, saving the (slightly hectoring) upper notes for the chorus. The peak top note isn’t crystal; the squeaks and deliberate note-breaks could easily become mannered. But the guttural shove she gives the final chorus is pure soul, and ultimately this is big satisfying balladry, like custard and crumble. And at her best, she gives lyrical platitudes back their universal meaning.
