The 58th Annual Grammy Music Awards were held Monday, February 14, 2016 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The host of the night was LL Cool J along with red carpet interviewers Bow Wow, Nancy O’Dell, and Kevin Frazier,

and the show featured performances by many big name music stars. It was obvious that a lot of thought and effort went into the production, but there were too many technical errors, awkward stage performances, and plain old mistakes for it to be considered a great show.

Taylor Swift’s opening performance of “Out of the Woods” was a great opening act for the evening. Even though the eventual album of the year winner missed a word or two in her song, the performance was still entertaining and was a great way to start off the show.

Another good performance was from the actors in the Broadway play “Hamilton” which did a number from its opening act remotely shown from their stage in New York.This was the first time that the award show had featured a Broadway production, and have that production win an award. This added a different style to the show, and let America get a sense of what the musical was like. Not to mention that the casts acceptance speech was one of the best I have ever heard, with Lin Manuel Miranda rapping the acceptance speech.

The most captivating performances of the night was Kendrick Lamar’s performance of “Butterfly” and Lady Gaga’s tribute to David Bowie. Kendrick’s performance, featuring the singer in a jail set amongst many other set designs while he rapped, made the feature fun to watch and kept the audience, and also me, captivated. Lady Gaga’s performance allowed the audience to get a feel of what all the singer can do while keeping them entertained with all the amazing technical things happening on stage.

While there were some good moments, the award show was filled with many mistakes and “what in the world is happening?” moments. One major “what’s happening”  moment was when Adele, making a comeback to the Grammy stage after a few years, was performing one of her hit songs, “All I ask”. Many fans of Adele were anticipating the performance, including me, but just before the powerful singer could get started good the mike begins to fade in and out.

Soon the whole performance is suddenly overtaken by the piano microphone falling out of place, drowning out the singer. There was the distraction of the

big, bright light shining on the singer in the background, making it hard to see her.

The Weekend’s performance of “Can’t Feel My Face” went pretty well as it was one of the artist’s top hits from his album.  But with last minute changes to the performance because of the absence of Lauryn Hill, who could not make it in time for the live performance, caused his performance of “In the Night” to sound very scratchy and off tune.

Along with Lauryn Hill, two other artists scheduled to perform were absent from the awards show. Nicki Minaj and Rihanna were both no shows to the event. Rihanna was not able to attend because of doctor’s orders to rest her voice from music for a while, and there was no word on why Nicki Minaj did not perform. I, expecting to see both performances, was surprised not to see either of the artists on the stage during the night.

Soon after The Weekend’s performance, Justin Bieber got his chance to perform. Bieber performed with Skrillex and Diplo, singing one of Bieber’s hits “Where are you now”. However, the performance was plagued by technical errors and the audience was left with Bieber  jumping around the stage with drums and other instruments trying to pump up the crowd.

One of the worst performances of the night was The Vamps, Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry, performing their song “Ace of Spades”.  I am not a big fan of this kind of rock and roll, which is probably why this performance didn’t make much sense to me. But the performance left me with one question; why would Johnny Depp, one of our most famous actors, would ever really want to start a band?  Overall, the performance just seemed weird.

The award show also failed to show many of the awards given out throughout the night, leaving the audience wondering, why the artist were getting the awards and how many they actually received. There was not even a speech given from Justin Bieber, who won his first Grammy. This just didn’t make much sense.

For the next Grammy award show they should show more awards being handed out, with stars making more acceptance speeches. There should be back-up artists to fill in for those who don’t show up, to keep things moving, and they should make sure the technical parts of the show are reliable before an artist steps on the stage to perform.