Bad Bunny, Black Pumas, Cardi B, BTS, Brandi Carlile, DaBaby, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish, Mickey Guyton, Haim, Brittany Howard, Miranda Lambert, Lil Baby, Dua Lipa, Chris Martin, John Mayer, Megan Thee Stallion, Maren Morris, Post Malone, Roddy Ricch, Harry Styles, and Taylor Swift will perform at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, March 14, the Recording Academy has announced.
Virtually the entirety of the artists are nominees, and a few — including Styles, Megan Thee Stallion, Bad Bunny, DaBaby, Doja Cat and Guyton — will make their debut as Grammy performers.
The ceremony happens “in and around” the Los Angeles Convention Center, under exacting COVID convention. “Craftsmen will be meeting up, while still securely separated, to play music for one another as a local area and praise the music that joins us all,” as per the declaration. The crowd will be restricted to entertainers, chosen people and few their visitors.
First-time Grammy executive producer Ben Winston said a few exhibitions will be pre-recorded. And keeping in mind that honorees will assemble in a room — a huge one in the enormous conference hall — there will be four phases, each set up in the round with few entertainers, candidates and visitors gathered around it.
“We’ve designed a set that you could argue makes it an even more exciting show,” Winston says. “The performers and nominees are each other’s audience, so it’s a room of incredible musicians, all safely distanced from each other, and every 45 minutes a new four groups come in and the [previous] four go out.”
Furthermore, the show will honor the country’s independent music venues, which have been extraordinarily affected by the pandemic. Laborers from New York’s Apollo Theater, Nashville’s Station Inn, and the Troubadour and the Hotel Café (both in Los Angeles) will introduce the honors in different classifications for the duration of the evening.
Winston said, “Venues are such an integral part of the music community — some of the greatest shows we’ve ever seen have been at the Troubadour or my favorite small venue in London. So we’ve decided that this year, the majority of the awards will be given out by great characters who work in those venues — bartenders, security, door people — and I love the idea that Album of the Year can be given out by people like that. It’s the people who make these places historic, and this allows us to highlight the great work that they do and the fact that they’ve been out of work for so long — and to show that we haven’t forgotten them on ‘Music’s Biggest Night,’ and remind our audience that when this is all over, to go back to their favorite venue.”
Winston additionally clarified the reasoning behind reporting the entirety of the entertainers on the double, instead of the conventional sluggish dribble in the weeks paving the way to the show. “Yep, we’re going for it in one fell swoop, everybody in the same moment so there’s no hierarchy. We’re doing many things differently this year that we might as well kick it off with the way we announce the performers. I think when you announce two at a time, four at a time, people say, ‘There isn’t enough of this or that,’ or ‘Where’s so-and-so?’ We have a really impressive group, and this way you see the breadth and range of the performers we have on the show.”
Facilitated by Trevor Noah, CBS and the Recording Academy present the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, circulating live on Sunday, March 14, 2021, at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT on CBS Television Network and furthermore accessible to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.
The Grammys are delivered by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy. Winston is leader maker, Jesse Collins and Raj Kapoor are co-chief makers, Fatima Robinson, Josie Cliff, and David Wild are producers, Patrick Menton is ability maker, and Hamish Hamilton is director.
