The 68th Annual Grammy Awards premiered on Monday, Feb. 2, as comedian Trevor Noah hosted for his sixth consecutive year, which also marked his final time hosting the Grammys. Continuing the theme of last times, CBS/Paramount+ will no longer host the Grammys and the show will move over to ABC/Disney+ beginning next year.
The show lasted over three hours, running eight minutes past its end time of 11:30 p.m. Only nine awards were handed out during the broadcast, with 86 being given during the pre-telecast. This left audiences desiring more out of the show award-wise, especially with the plethora of commercials shown in between performances and awards, and sometimes lengthy talks between Noah and the crowd.
There was a Best New Artist medley that included a performance by all the nominees in the category. A technical difficulty occurred during Alex Warren’s performance of “Ordinary,” as his in-ears were not matched with the backtrack, leading to an off-time performance. While he eventually caught up, he posted on TikTok the next day poking fun at the incident, reading, “When you’re performing at the Grammys and all you hear is this in your in-ears,” followed by a lagged, overlaid audio of his song.
The Best New Artist winner, Olivia Dean, spoke during her acceptance speech about having an immigrant grandmother. She is best known for her song “Man I Need” that has over 720 million streams on Spotify as of Monday, Feb. 9.
“I’m a product of bravery, and I think those people deserve to be celebrated,” Dean said during her acceptance speech. “We’re nothing without each other.”
Rapper Kendrick Lamar won the most awards including Best Rap Album for “GNX”, Best Rap Song for “tv off (feat. lefty gunplay)” and one of the big four categories, Record of the Year for “luther (with sza)”.
Lamar also broke Jay-Z’s record for the most-awarded rapper, now earning 26 Grammys over Jay-Z’s 25.
Bad Bunny, 2026 Super Bowl performer, made history having the first Spanish-language album to win Album of the Year.
Artists like Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish used their award acceptance speeches as a chance to denounce recent activity by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“I want to dedicate this award to all the people who had to leave their homeland to follow their dreams,” Bad Bunny said.
He continued this sentiment while accepting Album of the Year for “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” saying, “We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”
The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Cher and the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award went to Pharrell Williams.
Cher had one of the memorable moments of the night, in addition to winning the Lifetime Achievement award. She was expected to announce the nominees and winner for Record of the Year but announced it to “Luther Vandross” instead of the song, “luther” by Lamar and SZA.
“That’s his frequency that allowed us to win and that allowed it to be memorable,” SZA said, making light of the moment. “So, she’s not wrong. And she’s from that era – she probably really knew Luther Vandross.”
Another milestone went to Steven Spielberg as he officially became an EGOT winner – someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. His Grammy win was for Best Music Film for “Music by John Williams.”
The 68th Annual Grammy Awards were, as always, something special and allowed for more Grammy history to be made and political protests to be had.
