(March 10, 2011) — Feb. 13 was the “biggest night in music” for 2011 at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The variety of highly anticipated musical acts spanning from Dr Dre to Mick Jagger to Barbra Streisand to Gaga to Arcade Fire and red carpet hype leaves me asking whether the Grammys are more of a high class concert than an awards show. By now, anyone who tunes into the Grammys should know that watching the Grammys is hardly about awards. Of the 108 grammys awarded by the academy this year, ten were squeezed into the three-hour program of 17 performances by over 35 artists (muppets included!). To kick off the event, Christina Aguilera braved the stage with Jennifer Hudson, Florence Welch, Yolanda Adams and Martina McBride and showed their R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Aretha Franklin in a soulful six-song tribute to the recovering legend. After Lady Gaga’s incubation-circus act was over, she broke out of her egg and broke out a surprisingly dark organ solo contrasting with the dance beats in her debut of “Born This Way.” Even though she topped last year’s outfit madness, her performance for “Born this Way” was rather generic (on a lady gaga scale) compared to last year’s duet with Elton John. Even so, Cee Lo Green provided enough of Elton for this year with his vivid set reproduction of Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” for “the song otherwise known as ‘Forget You’” featuring Jim Henson muppets. Sure, there were memorable moments -— Mick Jagger hopped around the stage like it was 1962, Eminem and Dr. Dre reunited for the first time on stage in 10 years, Jannelle Monae crowd surfed in a suit, Bob Dylan brought folk back center-stage, and Arcade Fire played an encore simply because they like music. And good for you, Arcade Fire, because it would have taken Katy Perry a year to learn how to dance and Gaga a womb to fall out of for either them to put on an encore. Of course the Grammys put on an elaborate show and kept viewers watching for three hours, but where was the wow factor the Grammys usually produce for the millions of dollars it cost? Sadly, there were no acrobatics by Pink or hardly any boundary-pushing or visually innovative acts. Performances like Justin Beiber’s along with pointless home videos of how he struck it lucky with Usher, Katy Perry’s attempt to liven up sitting on a swing with clips from her marriage, and the boring infomercial-like segment by the chairman made it seem like the Academy’s priorities seep deep into the commercial agenda of the industry of TV ratings and profit. When acts like Beiber, Drake and Perry are advertised yet left un-awarded, it makes it seem that their name is only worth security in viewership by mainstream America and nothing in the eyes of their panel of experts. In a rant over the actual awards given, Steve Stoute, a music executive in the industry, published a somewhat misguided and biased rant about the awards show, but did manage to bring up a valid point of the Grammys’ “over-zealousness to produce a popular show that is at odds with its own system of voting.” Since 1958, the Grammys has boasted of the fact that they reward artists for the quality of their music and not record sales. But as an academy who boasts that they reward musicians based on talent regardless of record sales, how can they not be called hypocrites for booking performances based on such factors to maintain high ratings.