Behind the Scenes of the 67th Annual Grammy Awards: ‘A Love Letter to Los Angeles’
Tonight’s 67th annual Grammy Awards will take place in a city traumatized by a natural disaster, a fact that was never far from the mind of its producers. The ceremony, hosted by Trevor Noah, will celebrate the year in music while also becoming a “love letter to Los Angeles,” according to Raj Kapoor, one of the show’s executive producers. Kapoor broke down what to expect and previewed some of the evening’s biggest performances, from Chappell Roan to Doechii. (The ceremony will begin at 8 p.m. ET, airing on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.)
What were the challenges of planning this event during the wildfires?
We started with all our official meetings, from the mayor of Los Angeles to the governor to the police departments and fire agencies, and wanted to make sure that they gave us their blessing, because safety was our first concern. Then we made a collective decision that the show must go on.
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Thousands of people depend on this show in Los Angeles, from the thousands of crew that actually work on this show to the economic impact that the show has. When we decided to move forward, it was like, how do we shine a positive light on the city of Los Angeles? How do we show people that we actually love this city? And that all these amazing artists actually live in the city of Los Angeles and they can all be under one roof.
Was there ever serious talk about not doing it?
It was never that we were not going to. But it was really checking in with first of all, we wanted to make sure that it was safe. That was our primary concern. And then as soon as we did have those meetings, it was like, of course we want to do this show. We already had months of planning. But then the tone shifts. And it’s like, how can this maybe become a little bit of a love letter to Los Angeles and how can we actually be good citizens and contribute to people that are in need and maybe help rebuild, reimagine, reinvigorate and inspire this sense of unity.
Los Angeles has actually been quite incredible in the past few weeks. I think we have a stronger sense of community than we have had for a very long time. And we feel that in the music community — so many artists that we would call, and people were this outpouring of love. “What can we do on the show? What do you need? If you need any extra messaging with press and stuff, like, happy to do more interviews, sign me up.” And I think the show is going to have that infectious energy because on the production side, we all feel that love.
How are you acknowledging what’s happening in the city during the show?
We’re doing a film piece that is going to honor Los Angeles. The opening of the show is definitely going to touch on our love for Los Angeles. We’re putting a spotlight on small businesses that may have been impacted by the fires. So there’s all these little moments of storytelling that are going to happen throughout the night and hopefully really connect, give some more emotional context and maybe help heal a little.
Trevor Noah seems like the perfect guy for navigating this kind of complex tone.
We love Trevor. We are so grateful for his participation. We think he’s the perfect Grammy’s host. He approaches things with the best side of humor, the most kind and compassionate outreach. When Trevor is on the screen, when Trevor is welcoming you and he’s your host, you feel like you’re going to be in safe hands throughout the evening. He and his team are absolutely lovely and so cooperative to work with. By show day it will set the perfect tone.
For Chappell Roan, this is going to be the capper to an amazing year.
What an amazing achievement for Chappell. She landed not only Best New Artist, but she landed in so many of the major categories. They’ve actually been so great to work with, and there’s so much creativity brewing around her. And it’s artist-driven, it is artist first. So much of the creativity that you see and the visualization of a performance is Chappell. She has surrounded herself with really amazing people that help her dreams come true, and that’s everything from her presentation decks that are sometimes hand-illustrated to this sense of excitement and thinking about things differently that we haven’t seen in a very long time.
Will it be one song or multiple songs?
Right now it is one song, and I think that was really hard to land on because there’s so many amazing songs on that album. I can tell you that we didn’t land on the one song immediately, and it’s been this ongoing journey with her of finding the exact right song for the right time and the right tone, and I think where it’s landed, it’s going to be a really special moment.
What about Sabrina Carpenter? She’s had an impressive tour with great production.
Sabrina’s level of touring and stuff was already quite grand. And I think she’s going to be bringing some of that flavor to the Grammy stage, but in a really unique way. Even though she’s nominated for new artist, there’s a sense of a quality to Sabrina that just feels timeless. We’ve seen her already do great things with choreography and with production, but she’s putting her own unique flavor when she comes to the Grammy stage.
Doechii has had her own huge breakthrough, and this is going to be a great chance to introduce her to a larger audience.
She’s so exciting. She’s done these amazing performances and she’s going to be taking the Grammy stage for the first time. Absolutely lovely artist to deal with. She has her own unique perspective. What I’ve seen, from her Tiny Desk concert to Colbert. is that everything is really unique. When she comes to the Grammy stage, she will do something that has not been seen before.
Any safety concerns about Benson Boone backflipping at the Grammys?
If Benson wants to backflip on the Grammy stage, we will gladly let him!
Billie Eilish is a Grammy veteran at this point.
What an incredible career she’s had so far. It’s amazing that she’s so young and has been on the Grammy stage…I want to say this is her fourth time already, at least. Billie and Finneas, an incredible body of work. Every time they’re on our stage, they do something that’s just completely them. What she represents is Los Angeles too — she is part of L.A. culture.
And Shakira’s returning to the Grammy stage?
It’s been quite a while since Shakira has been on our stage. Her album is absolutely incredible. She’s about to embark on a world tour and I think we’re going to get a little sneak preview flavor of what that tour holds. The music’s always amazing, but the production value is going to be next level.
How does all of this come together production-wise?
Right now there are rehearsals going on all around the city right now — on sound stages, in recording studios, in dance studios. There’s so many people rehearsing that sometimes things change in rehearsal. We get constant updates as we make the show; we get rehearsal videos. There’s a team of people that just manage getting us all the information that happens on the daily because these are artists and there’s creative decisions that happen while they’re in the studio — if they’re with dancers, if they’re with their choreographer, if they’re with their lighting team. All of those things are constantly evolving.Until they actually show up for camera blocking, that’s when it starts to become locked. Sometimes we’re surprised too when it was like, “Oh, well, we thought it was this” and they changed the ending because it felt a little better. And it’s part of the process of creating amazing live television.
It’s been a few years since this team took over the Grammys — what have you learned from the last few shows?
One of the biggest lessons that we’ve learned is we love creating moments, but we also love when we can do performances that flow from one to another. Sometimes in our show in certain acts you will have more than 10 minutes of non-stop music. The music will never stop and you will go from one performance to another great performance to another great performance. It takes a lot of planning to pull that off — from our incredible stage management team to our director, everybody coming together. Because we literally utilize every free performance space — literally, music performances can happen anywhere.
We always like to evolve, so we don’t like to repeat ourselves. That’s one of our challenges — how do you make the show feel fresh? How do you continue to take people by surprise and want them to tune in? This year, obviously we have challenges because we want to honor what has happened here in this city. But ultimately our mission is to have this really great sense of unity, not only for the Grammys, but for the city of Los Angeles. We love making this show, and we hope that everybody watching feels that love. But this year there’s another portion to that, and that’s the city of Los Angeles. And we hope people watching all feel the love that we have for this city.
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