Grammy Analysis

This year's Grammys were chocked full of surprises, lots of winners and losers, some incredible wins, and some stinging losses. But overall, considering the lack of quality music this year, I was happy to see the best truly win. Here is a quick look at the winners, the losers, and everyone in between.

Winners

• Lady Antebellum won huge, taking home five awards, including the coveted Record and Song of the Year.
• After losing the Alternative Music Album away to The Black Keys, but in the end Arcade Fire's popular and critical album The Suburbs pulled off an incredible upset taking home Album of the Year over favorites such as Lady Gaga, Eminem, and Lady Antebellum.
• Fantasia, after a tumultuous year, from highs (successful album) to lows (media blitz, overdose), won the Best Female R&B Performance for her hit Bittersweet.
• Lady Gaga may have been snubbed, but she lit up the Pop category and took home the Best Short Form Music Video.
• Esperanza Spaling is an incredible, unknown artist that beat out the likes of Drake, Justin Bieber, and Florence and The Machine, to take home the Best New Artist. Shocking as it was, it was one of the best moments of the night, and one of the most deserved awards.
• Jay-Z and Alicia Keys beat out both categories in the Rap field that they were up against Eminem and Rihanna.
• John Legend and the Roots shugged off an Oscar snub to win a couple of big awards.

Losers

• Eminem may have won Rap Album, but he was completely shut out of the General Categories, and lost some even with the Rap Field, where I (and many others) predicted a sweep.
• Poor Justin Bieber. Actually, not poor Justin Bieber, as he did not deserve to win, but either way, he definitely came up empty.
• Michael Jackson really didn't deserve to win a posthumous Grammy for This is It, but it would have been one last tribute to the king.
• Katy Perry simply couldn't compete with the power of Gaga.

Overall, after last year's Taylor Swift fiasco, this was a pretty mellow ceremony. The winners were deserving, and the surprises were good surprises. While most of the performances lacked the punch of previous years, most of them were pretty good, and enjoyable to watch. Also, it didn't seem to drag as long, and definitely did not last as long as some of the past ceremonies. Despite the year in music being pretty thin, in terms of quality, I thought the Grammys did a good job of rewarding where it was due, and making a ceremony that was fun to watch.