THE GRAMMYS CELEBRATE LOVE THROUGH MUSIC

Last night, the biggest names in music came together to celebrate the biggest night in music. This Trending News Monday, we’re bringing you the some of the top stories from the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.

If the Grammys had a theme last night, it wasn’t great music (of which there was an indubitable abundance), it was love. From the opening performance where husband joined wife on one of the world’s biggest stages all the way through the end of the awards show, love was in the air–with music only adding to its power.

Love resounded through the Staples Center (and through the television air waves) when Beyoncé and Jay-Z embraced after their performance, when Bruno Mars dedicated his Grammy to his late mother, when John Legend performed his love-song, “All of Me,” when the Academy remembered those the industry lost this year, and when accepting his Grammy, Dave Grohl told his friend Paul McCartney that they wouldn’t be there without him and Ringo Starr (as well as The Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath).

The greatest show of love, enhanced by music, occurred during Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love” performance. Queen Latifah (and later Madonna who sang her ’80s hit “Open Your Heart”) joined Macklemore, Ryan Lewis and Mary Lambert on stage to officiate the marriages of 33 couples: some young, some old, some opposite sex, some same sex, some same race, some interracial, all celebrating the same love. The performance, which epitomizes music’s ability to move people, and the “surprise” marriages brought music’s biggest names both to tears and to their feet.

Indeed, the Grammys reminded us, as this year’s recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award preached nearly half a century ago, “All You Need is Love.”

Fifty years ago, the world was rocked by one of the most loved and iconic (arguably the most iconic) bands ever to record a track. To commemorate the Beatles US debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS will air a Grammy special, “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles,” on February 9. Last night, both Ringo Starr and Sir Paul McCartney took to the Grammy stage: Starr performed “Photograph” and later took his seat behind the drum kit while McCartney performed “Queenie Eye,” off his album, New. This Beatles reunion was the first since Starr’s 70th birthday in 2010. While seeing the two remaining Beatles reunite was a treat for many music fans, all four Beatles were represented last night as John Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, and son, Sean Lennon, and George Harrison’s wife, Olivia Harrison, were in attendance. Both Harrison and Ono joined Alicia Keys to present the Album of the Year Award to Daft Punk.

Going five for five on the night, Daft Punk received three awards for their album Random Access Memories and two for the duo's hit single, “Get Lucky.” Although the robots didn’t speak personally, songwriter/collaborator Paul Williams spoke of love on Daft Punk's behalf during the Album of the Year acceptance speech. He said, “the moment that is as elegant and classy as the Grammys have ever been, is the moment we saw those wonderful marriages,” (alluding to the vows exchanged during Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s aforementioned performance). He went on to say that their award is a “labor of love.”

Aside from Nine Inch Nails’s Trent Reznor’s displeasure with having this band's performance with Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age and Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham cut short, love moved the music last night.

In case you missed the Grammys, don’t watch anything you can’t get on Netflix or just want to relive the awards show, check out Yahoo’s play-by-play.

Cover Photo Source: chrisdorney / Shutterstock.com

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