More song and dance than award giving

New York

TO belt, to dance, to rap or to mourn? The 58th annual Grammy Awards cycled through those modes on Monday night in its live broadcast from the Staples Center.

It is an awards show that has all but eliminated giving awards. Only eight competitive Grammys were announced on the three-and-half hour show; the other 75 awards were presented in an earlier webcast. The choices, slipped between nearly two dozen performances, continued the longtime stodginess of the Recording Academy, which presents the awards.

The retro-style Meghan Trainor was best new artist, while the song of the year was Ed Sheeran's wedding-friendly love song Thinking Out Loud. But the live performances drowned them out.

The Recording Academy was torn between the big voices and pretty faces of current hitmakers (and ratings magnets) such as Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Adele (although her album, 25, is not eligible until next year's Grammys) and coping with the deaths of generational heroes: David Bowie, BB King, Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhea…