Michelle Obama, former first lady and memoirist, turned up to the 2019 Grammys to make a statement about the unifying power of music.
During the host Alicia Keys’ opening monologue about music’s power to build bridges, she was joined by Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Jada Pinkett Smith. They each spoke about how music helped them become who they are today. Then Michelle, whose tour for bestselling book Becoming is selling out stadiums that many pop stars could only dream of filling, turned up.
‘From the Motown records I wore out on the South Side,’ she began, to rapturous applause from the crowd, before saying: ‘Ok, we’ve got a show to do’ and repeating the beginning of her speech again, simply so it could be heard, before continuing: ‘to the Who Run the World songs that fueled me through this last decade, music has always helped me tell my story. And I know that’s true for everybody here.
‘Whether we like country or rap or rock, music helps us share ourselves, our dignity and sorrows, our hopes and joys. It allows us to hear one another, to invite each other in. Music shows us that all of it matters, every story within every voice, every note within every song.’
This isn’t the first time Michelle and Alicia have appeared on stage together, with Michelle recently inviting the singer to appear on stage with her at her Becoming tour, to talk about her own personal development.
Another thing we noticed, too, was that Jada Pinkett Smith, who has called out those who still stream R Kelly’s music even after the explosive documentary detailing his alleged abuses of young black women was broadcast, had her arm around Lady Gaga, who has recently apologised for working with R Kelly. Jada is by no means representative of everyone hurt by Gaga working with R Kelly in 2013 on a song called Do What U Want (With My Body), which has since been pulled by Gaga on Spotify, but it does seem she’s cool with Gaga right now.
Michelle's speech wasn’t so much a barbed statement towards Donald Trump as a shining example of everything positive that the president doesn’t stand for. One statement deliberately punching up towards the president, though, came from Camila Cabello, who opened the Grammys show holding a newspaper reading ‘build bridges not walls’. A Cuban-Mexican immigrant, singing her hit song Havana, before being joined by Ricky Martin, Sandoval, J Balvin and Young Thug in a tribute to Latinx culture.
Elsewhere in political movements at the Grammys, Joy Villa (yeah, we don’t know her either) literally dressed up as the wall Donald Trump is aching to build. And Ricky Rebel, who once, apparently, toured with Britney Spears, wore a ‘Make America Great Again’ outfit.
Women musicians won across the board, existing in categories that didn’t have ‘women’ in their title. Which led Grammys boss Neil Portnow to apologisefor previously suggesting it was women’s job to ‘step up’ to get awards, saying, reports CNBC: ‘This past year I've been reminded that if coming face to a face with an issue opens your eyes wide enough it makes you more committed to bring change.’
The next apology Portnow is due to make is to rap stars such as Childish Gambino (who won four Grammys) who felt obliged to boycot the event in protest about the fact that not one hip hop album has won ‘best album’ since 2004, with Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Let's hope he does it before he steps down from the role in July!