Re. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss sounding like they were singing underwater: It’s the venue itself, the Staples Center here in Los Angeles. Really lousy acoustics. In fact, I could say that about any and all sports arenas. They’re all great for sports, but they’re all terrible for the full music experience.

Best Female Country Vocal Performance

* “For These Times” – Martina McBride
* “What I Cannot Change” – LeAnn Rimes (your pick and my pick)
* “Last Name” – Carrie Underwood (winner)
* “Last Call” – Lee Ann Womack
* “This Is Me You’re Talking To” – Trisha Yearwood

I feel the same way you do about LeAnn Rimes and her performance. Arguably the best of her career. Unfortunately, very few people got to hear this masterpiece and that is a huge obstacle to overcome. Trisha Yearwood and Lee Ann Womack came out with very strong performances in their own right which is generally the standard for these two fine ladies. I was surprised at the nomination of Martina McBride. I was expecting Miranda Lambert or even Taylor Swift to get the nod over Martina. I’m a big fan of Martina but this year more than any other year she is more filler than contender. Which brings me to Carrie Underwood. Carrie is the reining champ in this category two years running and only two years removed from her best new artist win. Even though Carrie performs “Last Name” as good as it can be performed and the fact that it is the only chart topper among the nominees, in my opinion, it is arguably the weakest song in the category. This matters not, this is a category that weighs heavier on performance than it does on song quality and none of the ladies with the exception being LeAnn Rimes performs exceedingly better than Carrie Underwood. LeAnn’s brilliant but obscure performance will be hard pressed to overcome the Carrie Underwood machine.

I’m just asking how the Grammy’s validate their choice? Maybe it was in the Grammy’s best interest to give her the award to validate the choice they made two years ago when they named her Best New Artist. They have been criticized for questionable selections in the past.

Just my opinion and personal taste..I just think she sounded and looked ridiculous..The whole “bad girl” thing that Carrie tries to pull off doesn’t work for me. Thoroughly unconvincing. And as I indicated earlier, I think the song itself is obnoxious, so I admit my bias here. But I think there are a few singers who could pull it off much more effectively, namely Miranda Lambert and Jo Dee Messina. If this were a movie role instead of a song, and the casting director cast Miss. Underwood for this part, it would be an example of mis-casting, in my opinion.

It really seems to me as though Carrie is trying too hard..Vocally, I agree with the others here who stated that they thought she sounded like she was screeching, visually, she looked ungraceful, trashy, and awkward. Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be an energetic song, but I thought it was poorly excecuted .

And I thought both the song and the performance had very little to do with country music. It was all “hey look at me” diva histrionics…that stuff belongs in the pop world, imo., and there isn’t much about the song itself that is Country, with a capitol “C”, in my opinion..I have heard many people here and elsewhere urging Carrie to go real, Traditional Country…They have heard her Opry performance of Stand By Your Man, and I have heard her Opry performance of How Great Thou Art…Not saying she needs to sing all covers of the Cassics or anything like that…but a more traditional sound from Carrie would be awesome, she has an amazing voice, But when she expends so much on crap like we saw at the Grammy’s this year, I can’t help but think it’s a colossal waste of talent.

Gavin, I don’t really see your point here. I will say that’s not the way the awards were supposed to be voted on. If it is how it’s done, it doesn’t exactly strengthen the validation for Underwood’s award for this song. I saw that you said on another blog that studio recordings can be enhanced, so it’s not an accurate representation of the song? That’s true, but everyone has that advantage, since they’re all supposed to be judged by their studio recordings. It’s not like Carrie submitted a live recording and everyone else submitted doctored up studio recordings.

If, as you suggest, they did, indeed, judge by Underwood’s live performances of the song, I still wouldn’t say that she deserved the award over the other nominees. There are songs that I think she does a great job with in live settings, but not this one.

I agree with Lynn…I thought her take on Carrie’s performance was spot on.

But I’m not objective here, as I think the song itself is obnoxious.

I know there’s a real good Country singer in there somewhere Carrie, but I don’t hear her in that song nor do I see her in the vocal and strutting histrionics of that performance.

What are you talking about? You don’t sit on a stool to sing that song. She strutted her stuff and out rocked U2 and Coldplay in the process. She was having fun and it showed.