Producer's Grammy Dish: Taylor, Bey & A Night 'People Will Talk About for Years'
Producer's Grammy Dish: Taylor, Bey & A Night 'People Will Talk About for Years'Raj Kapoor, an EP on the CBS awards show, reveals how the team will be threading the needle between celebration and a bruised L.A.
Music’s biggest weekend is here amid a historic era for Los Angeles. Three short weeks ago the city was forever changed in the face of the wildfires, but Angelenos are looking for signs of a way forward. That includes a completely reinvented Grammys weekend; gone are the glitzy bashes, packed schedules and general kibbitzing. In their place, a variety of events meant to honor the city and first responders, with a main thread: to spin a love letter to L.A. I was lucky enough to attend last night’s unofficial kickoff — the massive FireAid benefit concert that spanned two arenas: the Kia Forum and the brand spankin’ new Intuit Dome. I was roaming around the latter venue for action that began at 6:30 p.m. and didn’t wrap until close to 1 a.m., with acts from Billie Eilish to Graham Nash, Katy Perry to Dr. Dre, Slash to Sting and many others. Green Day and Lady Gaga bookended the proceedings, with the biggest cheers of the night (perhaps predictably) ringing out for the young ones on the roster: Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams and Eilish, along with homegrown L.A. artists like The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Tonight, MusiCares will host its annual charity gala, this year honoring the Grateful Dead, with a deepened purpose. Hosted by noted Deadhead Andy Cohen, the night will feature original members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bobby Weir, as well as covers of the jam band’s iconic songs courtesy the likes of John Mayer, Mick Fleetwood, Sammy Hager, Vampire Weekend, Norah Jones and Wynonna Judd. Meanwhile, tomorrow night’s coveted Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala at the Beverly Hilton will also be held to raise funds, while that night’s list of performers is usually kept under lock and key. It all reaches a fever pitch on Sunday night with the 67th Annual Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena. The proceedings kick off at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS and Paramount+ and will be hosted once again by Trevor Noah. The Recording Academy and MusiCares have donated $1 million to support music industry workers affected by the fires, and the show will include direct outreach encouraging viewers to donate to Direct Relief, the California Community Foundation and the Pasadena Community Foundation. As for who may win, Rolling Stone says Beyoncé should win album of the year (her first!) for Cowboy Carter but predicts Taylor Swift, one of the night’s presenters, will be taking that prize (it would be her fifth) for The Tortured Poets Department. If Bey does take the honor, Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz writes, “the win will feel momentous and career-capping in a way that it won’t for any other artist.” When it comes to the song of the year and best new artist, all eyes are on “Good Luck, Babe!” and Chappell Roan, who could launch further into the stratosphere after a breakout 2024. Regardless of who wins and who’s just honored to be nominated, there’s a show to put on — and a tricky one at that considering the situation in L.A. I always want to get inside these big events, so this morning I hopped on the phone with Angeleno Raj Kapoor, who is executive producing the Grammys alongside Ben Winston and Jesse Collins. Over the years, Kapoor has masterminded some of the biggest TV events in culture, such as ABC’s Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music & Laughter in 2022 and CBS’ 2021 Adele special with Oprah Winfrey, not to mention last year’s Academy Awards (which won the Emmy for outstanding variety special) and a slew of Grammy nights. Here’s what he shared about the puzzle of putting together this year’s ceremony: ‘Give a Little Power for People to Heal’
Rob LeDonne: All right, Raj. We’re two days away from the big show. Where’s your head at? Raj Kapoor: We are very busy down here at Crypto Arena. We are a little tired, but we are really excited and energized at the same time. It’s been a massive couple weeks of changes and new things coming in. Our show is active, kind of bursting at the seams right now, and we love it. We feel Los Angeles, and maybe the world, needs a show like the Grammys. We have a show that, in our best way, will maybe help — and give a little power for people to heal. We of course want to shine a light on everything that has happened here, but it’s also the Grammys. Right now I think we have the perfect balance of a show that has emotion and has heart. But we also have a show that feels very celebratory and big, with some of the biggest performances that we’ve ever had. RL: When was your very first meeting for this year’s show? RK: In very early May of last year. We start a year in advance and [those early conversations] are always about design. We talk about if there’s any artists that we want to keep our eyes on, and we start reaching out to labels and have meetings with them about what’s coming out. So by the time nominations happen, we as a team want to feel very knowledgeable about the landscape of music. RL: So then after all that planning, the city changed earlier this month. How did the wildfires alter your original plans? Is it a radically different show than what you were planning? RK: First we started reaching out to some of the state and local leaders, along with some of the public state agencies, just to make sure that they felt we weren’t taking away any resources that were needed. We got the green light, and then we came together to have a conversation with The Recording Academy, CBS and the production team. Everybody was unanimous that we needed the show to go on. We employ thousands of people; some people have worked on it for 30 or 40 years. So for these behind-the-scenes people that we love, to take away the show would have been to take away their support and income. And then we needed to make the decision [to stay in Los Angeles]. We wouldn't move to another city. And if we delay it, when would that be? We have clear challenges with how big our show is and how this would live somewhere else and how many days we can actually get into a building. We decided we wanted to go on and use it to do some good and really have a positive message. RL: How did all of that play into the eventual production? RK: We started thinking about how we would thread this idea of a love letter to Los Angeles and how that would play out throughout the evening. And then also raising money with everything that MusiCares does and the charities that they work with. [We’re working with] Direct Relief, the California Community Foundation and the Pasadena Community Foundation as well, along with a couple bespoke music performances that are going to happen throughout the evening. So it turned into a fine balance between addressing the fires and having more emotional context to the show.
RL: I was at FireAid last night, and I was wondering if your team was in touch with theirs just because of your similar goals of honoring the city and the artists involved. RK: We felt like the shows were so different; theirs was a telethon and it’s a lot longer. We couldn’t really get into the weeds with them because we’ve been so consumed on our show. We obviously knew the artists that they were working with and we were hoping that songs that were performed last night were not performed on our show, but we didn’t dictate that at all. We saw it as two complementary shows with everybody coming together to unite the city and do as much good as we can for everybody who’s been impacted. RL: What show had the more difficult balance to strike: this one, or your 2021 show during Covid shutdowns? RK: That’s a tough one. They’re both so unique and they both presented so many challenges. In Covid, we couldn’t have an audience, which was maybe our biggest challenge. We were separate, but we were together and so I think that that one was really humbling. It was a new way of making television. This one has been challenging because of the vast number of people that we know who have been impacted, which has sometimes slowed down the process because people weren’t at their homes since they were evacuated. They were putting their focus somewhere else and they weren’t necessarily thinking about how they were going to perform on the Grammys. As a result, some of these ideas came together really late. But we’re extremely confident that what we have is going to be really beautiful.
RL: Aside from what’s already been announced, including the Quincy Jones tribute presented by Will Smith, is there anything else we can expect Sunday you can reveal? RK: Even with all the performers and presenters that have been announced, we still have more in store for people on Sunday that nobody really knows about yet. There’s a very small group of people who know certain things that are going to happen on Sunday; even the press team does not know some of the names. We always like to have a few of those. As a viewer and admirer of award shows, I always loved when there was something happening unannounced. So we are keeping that tradition alive with some moments that are going to be exclusive and can only happen on the Grammys. RL: A big surprise last year was when Taylor Swift announced her new album The Tortured Poets Department live on air. Did you know she was going to do that? RK: We did not know that was going to happen! We were surprised just like everybody else.  RL: You've been at the helm of some of the biggest live TV events. What have been some highlights for you over the years? RK: At the Grammys, the 50th anniversary of hip hop performance [in 2023] — I think we had over 40 artists in that one segment. Kudos to everyone involved in that particular piece; it was almost a show in itself. People still talk about it. And then my other most memorable moment was last year with Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs [performing “Fast Car”], because that was a six- or seven-month conversation, and we did not know that was going to happen until almost two weeks before the show, when she finally said yes. When you look back at that performance and see the emotion between the two of them and the fact that we were able to get this amazing legend back on our stage with another artist who’s in a completely different genre. It just spoke to the spirit of what the Grammys has become. For this year, we had something really special rehearsed yesterday, and it’s so incredibly beautiful that I think people will be talking about it for years.
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