The world is perhaps a better place, a safer place, for Janet Jackson's having been nudged off (or booted off, or whatever) the Grammy show on Sunday night. And it's surely a more decent place because Justin Timberlake — who is actually the one who pulled part of Jackson's dress off at the Super Bowl, but who's apparently too hot a commodity right now to have been banished from the Grammy lineup — was encouraged (or leaned on, or whatever) to make some kind of vague "apology" for having offended anyone at some recent, unnamed sporting event.

So yes, we all feel better now. But the Grammy people shouldn't. They didn't appear to feel there was anything wrong with nominee R. Kelly showing up at their annual wingding. Kelly, who once illegally "married" the late singer Aaliyah when she was just 15 years old, is currently charged in Chicago with 21 counts of videotaping, producing and soliciting an underage girl to appear in a pornographic videotape. Each of these charges carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. In addition, Kelly is charged in Polk County, Florida, with 12 counts of possessing (on a digital camera found in the locked bedroom of his house) pornographic photographs in which he appears with an underage girl. Each of those charges carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Kelly was able to attend the Grammys only because he's free on bail — and because the Grammy people apparently figured that ... what: at least he wouldn't be likely to bare his chest on national television? Janet Jackson gets blackballed because she accidentally (or stupidly) exposed just a bit more breastage than Christina Aguilera was showing when she walked up onstage Sunday night to collect her Best Female Pop Vocal Performance Grammy. But R. Kelly is in the house. What's wrong with this picture? Apart from the fact that Kelly's not in it bare-assed and breathing heavily? (Click here for a list of Grammy winners.)

OK, putting that aside — if you can — this was, I thought, an unusually good Grammy show: inventively staged, snappily paced, and blessedly light on the interstitial music-biz blather with which Grammy execs have sometimes larded these productions in the past (see "Beyonce Wins Most, Oukast Shine, 50 Cent Shut Out At Grammys"). It was a triumph for hip-hop pop — the same music about which all the usual moral watchdogs have been yapping ever since they caught (or heard about) Nelly's crotch-grabbing Super Bowl performance. Only a moral watchdog — or a stone — could be un-blown-away by the talent and vitality and sheer brilliance of a duo like Outkast, who bestrode the show like a two-legged colossus. Their funk-tribute extravaganza, with '70s disco titans Earth, Wind & Fire, the legendary George Clinton and his latest P-Funk herd, and instant-star Robert Randolph and his Family Band, was marred only by the fact that Clinton seemed tired and sadly uninspired. But Randolph — a blues-crazed virtuoso on that unlikeliest of funk instruments, the pedal-steel guitar — really did tear the roof off the sucker.

  2004 Grammy Performances Highlight Photos
And then there was Prince. Prince opened the show because, even though his current music gets very little airplay, he remains a major, and highly influential, American artist. He's a flawlessly stylish performer and, as perhaps you noticed, a really ripping guitarist. Bringing Beyoncé on for a little mini-medley was a shrewd move, Grammy-wise — it added some up-to-the-minute heat. But Prince himself is a house afire whenever he steps onto a stage — no help needed, thanks — and we really must see more of him. Much more. Will somebody please do something about this?

If, like me, you've felt that we seem to be living in a time of entirely disposable pop stars, this show demonstrated that not all of them are about to be disposed of. Although she sported the evening's most unfortunate hairstyle (it looked like black cotton candy had been pasted all over her head), Christina Aguilera's over-dramatic-but-so-what performance of "Beautiful," complete with serious string section, robed chorus and whole fog banks of smoke blowing by, might have stopped any lesser show. Her delivery still sometimes verges on Mariah Carey calling-all-dogs territory, but she pulls it back, and she's smart and she keeps getting better and I'd bet she's here to stay. (As she pulled out every possible stop, I pictured Britney Spears weeping in front of a TV somewhere. With good reason.)

Same with Justin Timberlake. The guy's a star, there's no point in trying to deny that anymore, if anyone was still thinking to do so. But he really is funky, too, and, swaying away behind an electric piano almost like Stevie Wonder himself, he's undeniably a real musician. (Unfortunately, he was paired with Cuban jazzman Arturo Sandoval, who, on this occasion, at least, overplayed the trumpet more than ... well, I can't think of anyone else, actually.)

The two rock acts on the bill were perfect picks, the White Stripes especially. With Meg maintaining her lovable, signature thwock on drums, Jack — with his acoustic guitar plugged into a NASA-approved array of foot pedals — went ... I guess you'd have to say he went totally nuts on "Seven Nation Army" and "Death Letter." Blues-punk and soulful noise — nobody does it better.

The Foo Fighters were pretty much at their best, too. What a versatile and enterprising and adventurous band these guys are, and what a great song "Times Like These" really is. Having jazz-fusion luminary Chick Corea weigh in on piano sounds like a good idea theoretically, and you could tell Dave Grohl was having fun with it; but Corea's contribution was mostly theoretical, and his sound — maybe it was the miking — was parched and sickly. Odd. I mean, the man's a great piano-player.

  2004 Backstage Grammy Photos
There were some things that didn't work at all, of course — on a three-hour-plus show, how could there not be? The fact that the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan show 40 years ago was not reason enough to encourage Sting, Dave Matthews and country star Vince Gill to take a crack at covering "I Saw Her Standing There." Did they actually rehearse this? The vocal harmonies were ridiculously ragged, and Pharrell Williams, sitting stone-faced behind the drums, gave the impression of taking part in the project at gunpoint. Really, nobody should try to replicate the Beatles. It's a losing proposition.

And while pairing Sting with Sean Paul must have sounded good at some Grammy brainstorming meeting — Sting long ago mastered that reggae vibe, and of course Sean Paul, etc., etc. — the actuality was underwhelming. The idea was to have Sting launch into the old Police hit "Roxanne" on his own, then bring Sean Paul in to rap-ify it some, and then have the two of them wind it up together. But "Roxanne" turns out to be not all that much in need of rap-ifying, and Sean Paul's attempt at same just sucked the life out of the song; the all-together-now ending was a small, sad study in disarray. Also, what was that thing Sting was wearing, a kilt? Or just a cute pleated skirt? And how did a musician as accomplished as he manage to get sucked into two such ill-omened collaborations in one show?

But all right: The high point of the Grammys, for me, came at the end of Beyoncé's elaborately staged "Dangerously in Love 2" segment, a sort of period nightclub diorama set inside of a giant picture frame. I can't imagine Beyoncé has ever sung better than she did here, and she, you know, looked really great and all. But that wasn't the high point. The high point was when she hit the final note and flung out an arm and a white dove came fluttering in from the wings and landed right in the palm of her hand. I mean ... all right, her hand was filled with birdseed. But hey, you try it, OK? It was genius, the kind of small, cool thing that made people feel kind of glad to be there, I'll bet. Unless they were sitting next to R. Kelly.

—Kurt Loder

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