NEW YORK – The Latest on the Grammy Awards (all times local):
8:45 p.m.
Billie Eillish has won the Grammy Award for record of the year for the second straight year.
The 19-year-old Eillish won on Sunday night for “Everything I Wanted,” a year after winning it for “Bad Guy.”
Eillish appeared genuinely stunned accepting the award, saying, “This is really embarrassing for me.”
She told fellow nominee Megan Thee Stallion, “Megan, girl, I was going to write a speech about how you deserve this, but then I was like ‘There was no way they’re going to choose me.’”
She also beat fellow nominees Beyoncé, Black Pumas, DaBaby, Doja Cat, Dua Lipa and Post Malone.
It was a night women made history as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift hit milestones.
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MORE ON THE GRAMMYS
— The Grammys are drunk in love with Beyoncé and Taylor Swift: the singers both made history at the 2021 show.
— Doja Cat went for neon feathers and DaBaby brightened up the Grammys in a bright mustard and green floral suit as music’s big night offered a luxe fashion moment for the stars.
— Kanye West, Fiona Apple, Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé along with her daughter, Blue Ivy, are among some of the winners at the Grammy Awards.
— A peek behind the masks and precautious at the Grammys
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8:10 a.m.
Taylor Swift will go down in Grammy lore.
Swift’s album “folklore” won the Grammy Award for album of the year on Sunday night, making her the first female artist to win the award three times.
She also won it in 2010 for her album “Fearless,” and again in 2015 for “1989.”
Swift’s “folklore” won over nominated albums by Jhené Aiko, Black Pumas, Coldplay, Jacob Collier, HAIM, Dua Lipa and Post Malone.
Accepting the award, Swift said “we just want to thank the fans, you guys met us in this imaginary world that we created, and we can’t tell you how honored we are forever.”
She also thanked her collaborators, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, as well as her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, saying he turned writing songs during a pandemic fun.
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8:05 p.m.
Beyoncé has just won her 28th Grammy, making her the winningest woman in Grammy history.
Beyoncé broke the record with her victory Sunday night for best R&B performance for “Black Parade,” surpassing the 27 Grammys won by Alison Krauss.
She had tied the record just minutes earlier when she won best rap song with Megan Thee Stallion for “Savage.”
She won another Grammy with daughter Blue Ivy for best music video earlier Sunday.
Accepting the award on the outdoor stage at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Beyoncé said “this is so overwhelming, I’ve been working my whole life, since 9 years old, I can’t believe this happened, it’s such a magical night.”
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7:50 p.m.
Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” has won the Grammy for best pop vocal album.
It’s the third Grammy for the English-born singer-songwriter, who won best new artist at the 2019 Grammy Awards and whose performance of “Levitating” from “Future Nostalgia” aired early in the show.
Accepting the award on Monday night, she said, “One thing I’ve really come to realize is how much happiness is so important. I felt really jaded after my last album where I felt like I had to make sad music to feel like it mattered. I’m so grateful and so honored, because happiness is something that we all deserve.”
Dua Lipa won over albums by Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift.
She thanked her managers, who have been with her since she was 17, her label and her team. “This is insane,” she said. “This means so much.”
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7:30 p.m.
The Grammy for best rap song goes to “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé, giving Beyoncé a record-tying 27th Grammy.
With the total, Beyoncé matched Alison Krauss as the woman who has won the most Grammys, and may surpass Krauss later Sunday night.
Megan Thee Stallion accepted the award minutes after her head-turning performance of “W.A.P.” with Cardi B aired on the show. She praised all the nominees, saying, “Music really helped a lot of us get through the pandemic.”
Megan, who earlier was crowned best new artist, thanked Beyoncé for her role in the song, saying “When I was little, I wanted to grow up to be the rap Beyoncé.”
Beyoncé jumped on the mic to say, “I just want to quickly give my love to Megan,” adding “I have so much respect for you” and thanked her for inviting to contribute to the track.
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7:05 p.m.
H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe” has won song of the year at the Grammys.
The song with its Black Lives Matter themes won the songwriter’s award Sunday night over songs by superstars including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Billie Eillish.
H.E.R. shared the award with co-writers Dernst Emile II and Tiare Thomas.
As she accepted she said, “I’ve never been so proud to be an artist. We wrote this song over FaceTime, and I didn’t imagine that my fear and my pain would turn into impact and it would possibly turn into change.”
H.E.R. previously won Grammys for best R&B performance and best R&B album.
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6:45 p.m.
Bruno Mars celebrated Little Richard, Lionel Richie honored Kenny Rogers and Brandi Carlile paid tribute to John Prine during an in memoriam segment on the Grammy Awards that featured an especially long list of names after a year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mars, joined by Anderson .Paak blazed through Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly.” Richie sang “Lady,” the ballad he wrote and Rogers made a hit adding, “I miss you Kenny” as he ended.
And Carlile sang “I Remember Everything” for Prine, one of the artists lost in 2020 to the coronavirus, along with Charley Pride, K.T. Oslin, Adam Schlesiner, Trini Lopez and many others.
The performances were interspersed between montages of the names and faces of the dead.
Host Trevor Noah introduced the segment by telling viewers they can see the names of nearly 1,000 people in the music industry who died last year at Grammys.com.
Brittany Howard, backed up by Chris Martin on piano, ended the tribute with a stirring version of the Broadway standard “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
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6:35 p.m.
Harry Styles has won his first Grammy, taking for best pop solo performance for “Watermelon Sugar.”
Styles accepted the award Sunday night for the song that he also performed to open the show, dressed in a leather suit and a feather boa. He’s nominated for two more Grammys on Sunday night.
Styles topped fellow nominees Justin Bieber, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift.
The former One Direction member has put out two solo albums and his sophomore effort is called “Fine Lines.” It also contains the song “Lights Up.”
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6:30p.m.
Taylor Swift performed at the Grammys for the first time in five years, singing a medley of songs from her albums “evermore” and “folklore” in a mystical woodland-and-cabin setting.
Swift sang “Cardigan,” “August” and “Willow” on Sunday night, starting while lying on a faux-grassy hillside with trees and projected fireflies behind her in a gold gown and headpiece that had echoes of a forest fairy. She made her way into a cabin where she picked up a guitar and was backed up by collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.
The audience-free scene was set up on a stage inside the Los Angeles Convention Center, where most of the performances were pre-recorded this week because of pandemic precautions, though the show is presenting all of the performers as though they were live.
Swift is nominated for six Grammys on Sunday including album of the year for “folklore.” A win would make her the first woman to take the award three times.
Just before her performance, Miranda Lambert won best country album, a Grammy previously won by Swift, in a category that was nearly all women.
Lambert’s “Nightfall” beat out albums by Ingrid Andress, Brandy Clark, Little Big Town and Ashley McBryde.
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5:55 p.m.
The Grammys are spotlighting some of the nation’s best-known music clubs that were forced to close their doors because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Representatives from the Station Inn in Nashville, the Troubadour and Hotel Café in Los Angeles, and the Apollo Theater in New York were chosen to present trophies during Sunday night’s show. Each of the venues holds a unique place in music.
JT Gray from the Station Inn, known for its bluegrass tradition, will announce the best country album. Rachelle Erratchu of the Troubadour, where Elton John made his U.S. debut in 1970, will hand out the best pop solo performance trophy.
Billy Mitchell of the Apollo, famed for its amateur nights, will award the best rap song. Candice Fox of the Hotel Café, known for featuring acoustic-based songwriters, will announce album of the year.
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5:25 p.m.
Megan Thee Stallion has won best new artist at the Grammy Awards.
The 26-year-old became just the fifth rapper to win the award, which she accepted in person on the outdoor stage Sunday night, tearing up before she even began talking.
The award was the first one handed out during the telecast, but Megan Thee Stallion had already won a Grammy earlier Sunday for “Savage,” her hit that features Beyoncé.
The song is also nominated for best rap song and record of the year.
She beat out fellow nominees Ingrid Andress, Phoebe Bridgers, Chika, Noah Cyrus, D Smoke, Doja Cat and Kaytranada.
Megan Thee Stallion had a monster musical year that also brought unwanted attention when she was shot in the foot. Rapper Tory Lanez has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the shooting.
“It’s been a hell of a year, but we made it,” she said.
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5:10 p.m.
Trevor Noah opened the pandemic-altered 63rd annual Grammy Awards on an outdoor stage in front of a sparse crowd outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, with the Grammy’s usual home, the Staples Center, as a backdrop.
“We have made the decision to socially distance from the Staples Center,” the host said. “This is not a Zoom background.”
Noah walked inside the Convention Center during his presentation, where the show’s performances, many of them pre-recorded, will be broadcast from.
On four stages that face one other in the audience-free room, he introduced Black Pumas, HAIM, Billie Eillish and Harry Styles, who began the night’s music with a rendition of his “Watermelon Sugar.”
The song is among the nominees for best pop vocal performance, one of three nominations for the ex-One Direction singer.
He performed with a full band wearing a black leather sports coat with no shirt underneath, and a green feather boa.
Eillish, who dominated last year’s Grammys, immediately followed with a performance of “Everything I Wanted.” The three sisters of HAIM played immediately after Eillish.
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4:50 p.m.
Jacob Collier says he recorded his Grammy-nominated album in the same North London home “where I learned to walk as a 1-year-old.”
Before Sunday’s Grammy Awards at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Collier told The Associated Press that “Djesse Vol. 3,” which is nominated for album of the year, is the fourth he has recorded in his music room there.
Collier said: “I produced it by myself and I played the instruments on the album and I wrote the songs and arranged it and mixed it and stuff. But I mean, really it was just an experiment.”
He says the acclaim for the album and the nomination came “completely out of the blue” and it’s surreal to “be among these giants, these legends of the industry.
Collier’s fellow nominees in the category include Taylor Swift and Post Malone.
— Marcela Isaza at the Grammy Awards (@misaza)
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4:40 p.m.
Noah Cyrus says it’s “been a roller coaster of tears” to be nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards while dealing with the loss of her grandmother.
The 21-year-old Cyrus told The Associated Press before Sunday’s Grammy Awards that she had already been thinking of Loretta “Mammie” Finley, who died in August, when “someone said, ‘You look just like your grandma.’ And I started tearing up and it’s just been really emotional because I would have given anything to be with her, you know, or let her have her just be able to watch this on the TV. But I feel like I kind of have her with me.”
She said she has taken comfort and support from her family, which includes her father Billy Ray Cyrus and sister Miley Cyrus.
Wearing a wildly elaborate Schiaparelli cream-colored gown, Noah Cyrus says to make her own name she has had to “try to work with ten times more passion, more love” and to “be more driven.”
— Jonathan Landrum Jr. at the Grammy Awards (@MrLandrum31)
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4:30 p.m.
DaBaby says his Grammy performance will be “beautiful” despite performing in a “room full of nobody.”
DaBaby is among the performers who, because of the pandemic, pre-recorded a performance at the Los Angeles Convention Center with no audience that will air during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards telecast.
Decked out in a broad-brimmed, green-and-red fedora, yellow turtleneck and floral jacket in the run-up to the show, DaBaby told The Associated Press that “at the end of the day, we still have the ability to express ourselves through camera. So it’s no different than like a music video.”
He says he added a third verse with a special message to his performance of “Rockstar,” which is nominated for four Grammys, and could become just the second rap song to win record of the year.
DaBaby says he “feels like it’s going to touch everybody.”
— Marcela Isaza at the Grammy Awards (@misaza)
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3:15 p.m.
Brandi Carlile is excited to perform at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, even if there isn’t an audience. She says she’s really only performing for one person — the late singer-songwriter John Prine.
“I think that in the past performing in front of an audience is the only thing that matters to me,” Carlile tells The Associated Press. “But this time I’m just performing for John Prine. It’s just for John, and I know he’s there.”
Carlile spoke to the AP this week and addressed how different it feels to be playing live music again after a year of the pandemic. She says “it feels good to be dressed up and to be sparkling.”
She said that after being a performer for her entire adult life, the lockdown has given her a chance to stop. Even if she is ready to get back to rhythm of touring.
“I’m kind of a born entertainer, you know, that’s who I am. But I always wondered what would happen if I stopped for long enough to kind of look inward,” Carlile says. “I’m really happy with what did happen, but I’m ready to get back on the road again.”
— Jonathan Landrum Jr. at the Grammy Awards (@MrLandrum31)
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3 p.m.
Country star Mickey Guyton says her performance Sunday night on the Grammy Awards will be “a moment for Black people in country music.”
Guyton, a first-time nominee and first-time performer, is the first solo Black female artist to be nominated in a country category at the Grammys, following in the footsteps of the Pointer Sisters who have won a country Grammy Award.
“My life changed once I started running towards everything that made me different,” Guyton told The Associated Press during interviews backstage prior to the show. “They say country music is three chords and the truth. So I started writing my truth as a Black woman, singing country music and my experiences in my life. And one of those first songs was ‘Black Like Me.’”
She said that stepping on that stage is not only important to her, but all those communities that have felt marginalized in country music.
“I realize that not only am I walking through those doors as a Black woman, I need to hold the door open for many other Black, brown, LBGTQA plus artists that have the same dreams,” says Guyton.
— Jonathan Landrum Jr. at the Grammy Awards (@MrLandrum31)
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2:20 p.m.
Justin Bieber is a Grammy winner in the country genre for his “10,000 Hours” collaboration with Dan + Shay.
Dan + Shay accepted the best country duo/group performance Grammy virtually. Bieber did not appear during the Grammys Premiere Ceremony, where the majority of Sunday’s awards are bestowed.
It is Bieber’s second Grammy. He previously won for best dance recording for “Where Are U Now” with Diplo and Skrillex.
Dan + Shay have won two previous Grammys, for “Speechless” and “Tequila.”
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Late singer songwriter John Prine won two posthumous Grammys for best American roots song and best American roots performance for his last recorded song, “I Remember Everything,” a song about loss and memory.
Prine died last year at the age of 73 of complications due to COVID-19. His wife, Fiona Whelan, told reporters during a virtual press conference on Sunday that the song spoke to the importance of memories and really connected with people this past year.
“John had a way of pointing out the most simple everyday things that sometimes we overlook,” said Whelan.
Prine, a two-time Grammy winner who wrote songs like “Angel from Montgomery” and “Sam Stone,” also received a lifetime achievement award last year.
“I feel John’s presence today very strongly,” said Whelan.
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2 p.m.
Megan Thee Stallion has won a Grammy for “Savage,” her collaboration with Beyoncé.
She excitedly screamed for several seconds and rushed to compose herself while accepting the award virtually during the Grammys’ Premiere Ceremony.
She thanked God, her grandmother and her mother for pushing her, then turning her gratitude toward Queen Bey.
She said: “I still can’t even believe this,” as she struggled to keep her composure.
Megan Thee Stallion is among the performers on the main Grammys show that airs at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS.
The win brings Beyoncé one step closer to becoming the most decorated woman in Grammys history.
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1:35 p.m.
The late jazz pianist Chick Corea won two Grammys Sunday only about a month after his death.
Corea won the trophy for best improvised jazz solo and moments later won for best jazz instrumental album, which he shared with Christian McBride & Brian Blade. The wins for “All Blues” and “Trilogy 2” means Corea has a staggering 25 Grammys.
His widow, Gayle Moran, accepted both awards virtually. “His mission in life was to keep the music fires burning bright,” she said through tears.
Corea, who died at 79 on Feb. 9 of a rare form of cancer, was not the only artist who won a posthumous Grammy. John Prine also won two.
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1 p.m.
Billie Eilish and her producer brother, Finneas, have won a Grammy for their song “No Time to Die” from the pandemic-delayed James Bond film.
The pair appeared remotely to accept the song written for visual media honor and Eilish excitedly thanked actor Daniel Craig and “No Time to Die” director Cary Joji Fukunaga.
Eilish says “It was a dream to make this song, to work on this.” As for Finneas, he said: “I feel very lucky to be your brother.”
The award was announced during the Grammys’ Premiere Ceremony, which hands out the majority of the awards ahead of the main telecast at 8 p.m. Eastern.
“Jojo Rabbit” and the “Joker” soundtrack also won Grammys in the segment of the show that awarded music created for visual media.
“Jojo Rabbit” director Taika Waititi accepted the award virtually from what appeared to be a trailer. He said he was working on a film set. He joked, “I guess they’re just giving Grammys to anyone now. I’ll take it.”
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12:20 p.m.
Beyoncé — and her 9-year-old daughter Blue Ivy — have won the Grammy Award for best music video.
Blue Ivy is the second youngest winner of a Grammy behind Leah Peasell, who was 8 when The Peasall Sisters won album of the year at the 2002 show for their appearance on “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.
Neither Beyoncé or Blue Ivy were on the virtual Premiere Ceremony where the award was announced.
The win brings Beyoncé a step closer to becoming the most decorated woman in Grammy history. Beyoncé won her 25th Grammy on Sunday, hours before the official awards show begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.
With 27 wins, Alison Krauss holds the title for most Grammys for a female artist.
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11 a.m.
It could be a night for the history books for Taylor Swift and Beyoncé at Sunday’s Grammy Awards.
Beyoncé has never won album of the year throughout her career — she’s not up for the honor this year because she didn’t release a project during the eligibility period — but she is the most nominated act.
Trevor Noah will host the show, which airs at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and Paramount+. The Grammys were originally scheduled for Jan. 31 but were pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Follow AP’s complete coverage of the Grammys at www.apnews.com/GrammyAwards