56th Grammy Awards: Daft Punk, Lorde, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Rule, Taylor Swift Gets (Un)lucky

Making the Oscars look like a Live Action Short, the 56th Grammy Awards clocked in at a ridiculous 3 hours and 44 minutes, culminating, at least, in a spectacular win for Daft Punk for Album of the Year. And if that wasn’t enough, we were also treated to Taylor Swift thinking she had won (thanks to Alicia Keys’ weird enunciation of  ‘Random Access Memories.’ See it here.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis dominated the Rap categories and won Best New Artist while BNA snubee Lorde earned trophies for Song of the Year and Pop Solo Vocal (both for “Royals”).

Part of the Grammys overlong running time is always the amount of prolific performances and this year was no different. From the opening with Beyoncé and Jay-Z on “Drunk in Love” to the Grammys famous show collabs, the night saw everything from brilliance (Metallica with Lang Lang, Kendrick Lamar and Imagine Dragons) to a bit of old hat boring (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) to an historic occasion of a mass wedding officiated by Queen Latifah with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis with Mary Lambert singing their gay marriage anthem “Same Love” with some help from Madonna incorporating a fantastic arrangement of her #1 song “Open Your Heart.”

Here is the complete winners list:

Best New Artist
James Blake
Kendrick Lamar
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis *WINNER
Kacey Musgraves
Ed Sheeran

Best Pop Group/Duo Performance
“Get Lucky” by Daft Punk and Pharrell *WINNER
“Just Give Me a Reason” by P!nk and Nate Ruess
“Stay” by Rihanna feat. Mickey Echo
“Blurred Lines” feat. T.I. and Pharrell
“Suit and Tie” by Justin Timberlake and Jay Z

Best Rock Song
“Ain’t Messin ‘Round” by Gary Clark Jr., songwriter (Gary Clark Jr.)
“Cut Me Some Slack” by Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney, Krist Novoselic & Pat Smear *WINNER
“Doom And Gloom” by The Rolling Stones
“God Is Dead?” by Black Sabbath
“Panic Station” by Muse

Best Pop Solo Performance
“Brave” by Sara Bareilles
“Royals” by Lorde *WINNER
“When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars
“Roar” by Katy Perry
“Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake

Best Rap/Sung Collaboration
“Power Trip” by J.Cole featuring Miguel
“Part II” (On The Run) by Jay Z featuring Beyoncé
“Holy Grail” by Jay Z featuring Justin Timberlake *WINNER
“Now Or Never” by Kendrick Lamar featuring Mary J. Blige
“Remember You” by Wiz Khalifa featuring The Weeknd

Best Pop Vocal Album
“Paradise” by Lana Del Rey
“Pure Heroine” by Lorde
“Unorthodox Jukebox” by Bruno Mars *WINNER
“Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke
“The 20/20 Experience – The Complete Experience” by Justin Timberlake

Best Country Album
“Night Train” by Jason Aldean
“Two Lanes of Freedom” by Tim McGraw
“Same Trailer Different Park” by Kacey Musgraves *WINNER
“Based on a True Story …” by Blake Shelton
“Red” by Taylor Swift

Song of the Year
“Just Give me A Reason” by P!nk
“Locked Out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars
“Roar” by Katy Perry
“Royals” by Lorde *WINNER
“Same Love” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis feat. Mary Lambert

Record of the Year
“Get Lucky” by Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams *WINNER
“Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons
“Royals” by Lorde
“Locked Out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars
“Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell Williams

Album of the Year
“The Blessed Unrest” by Sara Bareilles
“Random Access Memories” by Daft Punk *WINNER
“Good Kid M.A.A.D. City” by Kendrick Lamar
“The Heist” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
“Red” by Taylor Swift

Find the rest of the winners of the 56th Grammys here.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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