Arts & Entertainment
LGBT ally Kacey Musgraves wins big at queer-dominated Grammys
Brandi Carlile, Lady Gaga also rack up wins
Country singer Kacey Musgraves won the coveted Album of the Year award for her album “Golden Hour” marking the end of a Grammys award show filled with plenty of queer women representation.
Musgraves, who also won Country Album of the Year, has emerged as an LGBTQ ally in the country music world. She has spoken up for more LGBTQ inclusion in country music and her song “Follow Your Arrow” was hailed as a pro-LGBTQ anthem. Musgraves also served as
Lesbian singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile won three awards during the pre-telecast including Best Americana Album for “By the Way, I Forgive You” and Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance for “The Joke.” She received the most nominations of any woman this year and became the first LGBTQ person to win awards in those categories.
While accepting the award for Best American Roots Performance, she shared that she came out in high school at age 15. She says she never was invited to high school parties or dances.
“I never got to attend a dance. To be embraced by this enduring and loving community has been a dance of a lifetime,” Carlile said. “Thank you for being my island.”
Brandi Carlile just won 3 Grammys in a row, and if there was one for “Best Speech,” it might have been 4 pic.twitter.com/CBtXyX3lyl
— Dave Paulson (@ItsDavePaulson) February 10, 2019
Carlile also received a standing ovation for her vocal powerhouse performance of “The Joke” during the televised ceremony.
Other queer artists with impactful Grammys performances were Ricky Martin who performed with Camila Cabello, J Balvin, Arturo Sandoval and Young Thug for a Broadway musical-inspired Grammys opener to Cabello’s song “Havana.”
Miley Cyrus, who identifies as pansexual, dueted with Shawn Mendes on his song “In My Blood.” She later also teamed up with Katy Perry, Maren Morris, Musgraves and Little Big Town for a tribute to Dolly Parton.
Janelle Monáe performed her bisexual anthem “Make Me Feel” off her album “Dirty Computer,” mixed in with her feminist song “
She didn’t win for either category she was nominated for (Album of the Year and Best Music Video) but she did dedicate her nominations to her “trans brothers and sisters.” In an interview with Variety, the singer was asked about coming out as queer last year.
“People do it everyday,” she replied. “My trans brothers and sisters, they do it everyday. And they are shunned from these sorts of events. So this one is for them.”
Lady Gaga scored two wins (Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Song Written For Visual Media) for her “A Star is Born” duet with Bradley Cooper, “Shallow,” which she also performed.
Dua Lipa and St. Vincent, who is sexually fluid, did a steamy joint performance of her song “
“Masseduction” + “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” +”One Kiss” = @st_vincent and @DUALIPA #GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/HlLcUAjCcF
— Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) February 11, 2019
History continued to be made with Cardi B becoming the first woman to win Best Rap Album and “This is America” by Childish Gambino winning Best Song. This is the first time a rap song has won in that category.
Jennifer Lopez also gave a dance-filled tribute to Motown while Diana Ross honored her own birthday, which is in March, with a performance. Michelle Obama, Lady Gaga, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Lopez also made appearances at the top of the show to help host Alicia Keys reflect on the importance of music.
Check out the complete list of winners below.
Album Of The Year — “Golden Hour”- Kacey Musgraves
Record Of The Year — “This Is America” – Childish Gambino
Best New Artist — Dua Lipa
Best Rap Album — “Invasion Of Privacy”- Cardi B
Best R&B Album Winner — “H.E.R.”- H.E.R.
Best Rap Song — “God’s Plan”- Drake
Best Country Album — “Golden Hour”- Kacey Musgraves
Song Of The Year — “This Is America”- Childish Gambino
Best Pop Duo/Group Performance — “Shallow” Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper
Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical — Pharrell Williams
Best Rap/Sung Performance — “This Is America”-Childish Gambino
Best Rap Performance — “King’s Dead”- Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Future & James Blake / Bubblin,
Best Rock Album — “From The Fires”-Greta Van Fleet
Best Rock Song — “Masseduction” – St. Vincent
Best Metal Performance — “Electric Messiah”- High On Fire
Best Rock Performance — “When Bad Does Good”- Chris Cornell
Best Urban Contemporary Album — “Everything Is Love”- The Carters
Best R&B Song — “Boo’d Up”- Ella Mai
Best Traditional R&B Performance — “Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand”- Leon Bridges / “How Deep Is Your Love”-Pj Morton Featuring Yebba
Best R&B Performance — “Best Part”- H.E.R. Featuring Daniel Caesar
Best Latin Jazz Album — “Back To The Sunset”- Dafnis Prieto Big Band
Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album — “American Dreamers: Voices Of Hope, Music Of Freedom”- John Daversa Big Band Featuring Daca Artists
Best Jazz Instrumental Album — “Emanon”- The Wayne Shorter Quartet
Best Jazz Vocal Album — “The Window”- Cécile Mclorin Salvant
Best Improvised Jazz Solo — “Don’t Fence Me In”- John Daversa
Best Reggae Album — “44/876”- Sting & Shaggy
Best Dance/Electronic Album — “Woman Worldwide”- Justice
Best Dance Recording — “Electricity”- Silk City & Dua Lipa Featuring Diplo & Mark Ronson
Best Contemporary Classical Composition — “Kernis: Violin Concerto”- James Ehnes, Ludovic Morlot & Seattle Symphony
Best Classical Compendium — “Fuchs: Piano Concerto ‘Spiritualist’”; Poems Of Life; Glacier; Rush”- Joann Falletta
Best Classical Solo Vocal Album —” Songs Of Orpheus”-Monteverdi, Caccini, D’india & Landi, Karim Sulayman
Best Classical Instrumental Solo — “Kernis: Violin Concerto”- James Ehnes
Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance — “Anderson”- Laurie: Landfall, Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet
Best Choral Performance — “Mcloskey: Zealot Canticles”- Donald Nally
Best Opera Recording — “Bates: The (R)Evolution Of Steve Jobs”-Michael Christie, Garrett Sorenson, Wei Wu, Sasha Cooke, Edward Parks & Jessica E. Jones
Best Orchestral Performance — “Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11”- Andris Nelsons
Producer Of The Year, Classical — Blanton Alspaugh
Best Engineered Album, Classical — “Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11”- Andris Nelsons & Boston Symphony Orchestra
Best Pop Vocal Album — “Sweetener”- Ariana Grande
Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album — “My Way” -Willie Nelson
Best Pop Solo Performance — “Joanne (Where Do You Think You’re Goin’?)”- Lady Gaga
Best Country Song — “Space Cowboy” – Kacey Musgraves
Best Country Duo/Group Performance — “Tequila”- Dan + Shay
Best Country Solo Performance — “Butterflies”- Kacey Musgraves
Best Music Film — “Quincy”- Quincy Jones
Best Music Video — “This Is America”-Childish Gambino
Best Regional Roots Music Album — “No ‘Ane’I”- Kalani Pe’a
Best Tropical Latin Album — “Anniversary”- Spanish Harlem Orchestra
Best Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano) — “¡México Por Siempre!”- Luis Miguel
Best Latin Rock, Urban Or Alternative Album — “Aztlán”- Zoé
Best Latin Pop Album — “Sincera”- Claudia Brant
Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling) — “Faith – A Journey For All”- Jimmy Carter
Best Children’s Album — “All The Sounds”- Lucy Kalantari & The Jazz Cats
Best Folk Album — “All Ashore”- Punch Brothers
Best Contemporary Blues Album —” Please Don’t Be Dead”- Fantastic Negrito
Best Traditional Blues Album — “The Blues Is Alive And Well”- Buddy Guy
Best Bluegrass Album —”The Travelin’ Mccourys”- The Travelin’ Mccourys
Best Americana Album — “By The Way, I Forgive You”- Brandi Carlile
Best American Roots Song — “The Joke”- Brandi Carlile
Best American Roots Performance — “The Joke”- Brandi Carlile
Best New Age Album — “Opium Moon”- Opium Moon
Best Song Written For Visual Media — “Shallow”- Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper
Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media — “Black Panther”- Ludwig Göransson
Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media — “The Greatest Showman”- Hugh Jackman (& Various Artists)
Best World Music Album — “Freedom”- Soweto Gospel Choir
Best Roots Gospel Album — “Unexpected”- Jason Crabb
Best Contemporary Christian Music Album — “Look Up Child”- Lauren Daigle
Best Gospel Album — “Hiding Place”-Tori Kelly
Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song — “You Say” -Lauren Daigle
Best Gospel Performance/Song — “Never Alone”- Tori Kelly Featuring Kirk Franklin
Best Contemporary Instrumental Album — “Steve Gadd Band”- Steve Gadd Band
Best Immersive Audio Album —” Eye In The Sky – 35th Anniversary Edition”- The Alan Parsons Project
Best Remixed Recording — “Walking Away (Mura Masa Remix)”- Haim
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical — “Colors”- Beck
Best Historical Album — “Voices Of Mississippi: Artists And Musicians Documented By William Ferris”
Best Album Notes —” Voices Of Mississippi: Artists And Musicians Documented By William Ferris”
Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package — “Squeeze Box: The Complete Works Of ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic” Weird Al Yankovic
Best Recording Package — “Masseduction”- St. Vincent
Best Arrangement, Instruments And Vocals — “Spiderman Theme”- Randy Waldman Featuring Take 6 & Chris Potter
Best Arrangement, Instrumental Or A Cappella — “Stars And Stripes Forever”- John Daversa Big Band Featuring Daca Artists
Best Instrumental Composition — “Blut Und Boden (Blood And Soil)”- Terence Blanchard
Best Alternative Music Album — “Colors”- Beck
Best Musical Theater Album — “The Band’s Visit”- Original Broadway Cast
Best Comedy Album — “Equanimity & The Bird Revelation”- Dave Chappelle
Arts & Entertainment
In an act of artistic defiance, Baltimore Center Stage stays focused on DEI
‘Maybe it’s a triple-down’
By LESLIE GRAY STREETER | I’m always tickled when people complain about artists “going political.” The inherent nature of art, of creation and free expression, is political. This becomes obvious when entire governments try to threaten it out of existence, like in 2025, when the brand-new presidential administration demanded organizations halt so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programming or risk federal funding.
Baltimore Center Stage’s response? A resounding and hearty “Nah.” A year later, they’re still doubling down on diversity.
“Maybe it’s a triple-down,” said Ken-Matt Martin, the theater’s producing director, chuckling.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
‘La Lucci’
By Susan Lucci with Laura Morton
c.2026, Blackstone Publishing
$29.99/196 pages
They’re among the world’s greatest love stories.
You know them well: Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Abelard and Heloise. Phoebe and Langley. Cliff and Nina. Jesse and Angie, Opal and Palmer, Palmer and Daisy, Tad and Dixie. Now read “La Lucci” by Susan Lucci, with Laura Morton, and you might also think of Susan and Helmut.
When she was a very small girl, Susan Lucci loved to perform. Also when she was young, she learned that words have power. She vowed to use them for good for the rest of her life.
Her parents, she says, were supportive and her family, loving. Because of her Italian heritage, she was “ethnic looking” but Lucci’s mother was careful to point out dark-haired beauties on TV and elsewhere, giving Lucci a foundation of confidence.
That’s just one of the things for which Lucci says she’s grateful. In fact, she says, “Prayers of gratitude are how I begin and end each day.”
She is particularly grateful for becoming a mother to her two adult children, and to the doctors who saved her son’s life when he was a newborn.
Lucci writes about gratitude for her long career. She was a keystone character on TV’s “All My Children,” and she learned a lot from older actors on the show, and from Agnes Nixon, the creator of it. She says she still keeps in touch with many of her former costars.
She is thankful for her mother’s caretakers, who stepped in when dementia struck. Grateful for more doctors, who did heart-saving work when Lucci had a clogged artery. Grateful for friends, opportunities, life, grandchildren, and a career that continues.
And she’s grateful for the love she shared with her husband, Helmut Huber, who died nearly four years ago. Grateful for the chance to grieve, to heal, and to continue.
And yet, she says of her husband: “He was never timid, but I know he was afraid at the end, and that kills me down to my soul.”
“It’s been 15 years since Erica Kane and I parted ways,” says author Susan Lucci (with Laura Morton), and she says that people still approach her to confirm or deny rumors of the show’s resurrection. There’s still no answer to that here (sorry, fans), but what you’ll find inside “La Lucci” is still exceptionally generous.
If this book were just filled with stories, you’d like it just fine. If it was only about Lucci’s faith and her gratitude – words that happen to appear very frequently here – you’d still like reading it. But Lucci tells her stories of family, children and “All My Children,” while also offering help to couples who’ve endured miscarriage, women who’ve had heart problems, and widow(ers) who are spinning and need the kindness of someone who’s lived loss, too.
These are the other things you’ll find in “La Lucci,” in a voice you’ll hear in your head, if you spent your lunch hours glued to the TV back in the day. It’s a comfortable, fun read for fans. It’s a story you’ll love.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Theater
Minimal version of ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ heading to Dupont Underground
Director Nick Westrate on this traveling take on Williams’s masterwork
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Produced by The Streetcar Project
April 20-May 4
Dupont Underground
19 Dupont Circle, N.W.
Tickets start at $85.
Dupontunderground.org
An aggressively minimal version of Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” is poised to run at Dupont Underground (April 20-May 4), the nonprofit cultural space located in a repurposed, abandoned 1949 streetcar station beneath Dupont Circle.
The Streetcar Project’s production performs in site-specific spaces. It’s almost entirely without design elements. There is no steamy, cramped Vieux Carré apartment. You won’t see Blanche’s battered trunk exploding with cheap finery, faded love letters, and demands for back property taxes, or the familiar costumes.
Co-created by Lucy Owen (who stars as Blanche DuBois) and out director Nick Westrate in 2023, this traveling spare take on Williams’s masterwork about a fragile woman on the margins in conflict with her brutish brother-in-law seems a reaction to necessity. It’s also an exploration of whether, like Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” it can subsist on language alone.
With little distractions (even Blanche’s cultivated southern belle accent has been daringly stripped away), the spotlight shines almost solely on text. “This play holds that,” says Westrate, 42. “I remind the actors that the while there is plenty of movement, language is really the only game in town.”
New York-based Westrate, who’s best known as an esteemed actor with New York and regional credits including Prior Walter in János Szász’s production of “Angels in America” at Arena Stage, describes “Streetcar” as “the most perfect play on earth” but not one he thinks of acting in (“I’m not right for Stanley Kowalski or Mitch”) though he agreed to direct.
“These days if you’re not a not a movie star or an established director, you’re not likely to do “Streetcar.” So, for us, we have to be able to do it with almost nothing, on the New York subway if necessary. And that’s kind of how we built it.”
Westrate first experienced Dupont Underground while attending a staged reading. He was so obsessed with the space as a prospective place to take the production, he found it hard to concentrate. He says, “With its long, curved track and tunnel, Dupont Underground is a terrifying, beautiful room that carries so much metaphorical weight, so much possibility for our production.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Is finding the right space for this “Streetcar” part of the thrill?
NICK WESTRATE: Whenever I enter a weird room or pass by an abandoned CVS, I try to figure out how we might do the show there, especially places that are dilapidated, architecturally odd, or possibly haunted. And each space we use, lends something to the production. The Rachel Comey store in Soho was a very Blanche coded space. And an artist’s workshop on Venice Beach in California with its huge saws and metal hooks lent raw imagery. The scenes between Blanche and Stanley near the end were absolutely terrifying.
BLADE: More recently that same bare bones production has played in more traditional spaces like the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen and San Francisco’s A.C.T. Is it hard to now go to Dupont Underground?
WESTRATE: Each time we do this we have to crack open the play again because the staging is entirely new, but we’re used to performing in unusual spaces and Dupont Underground rather takes us back to form. As a former streetcar station, it’s the most appropriate space we’ve had yet.
The cast will literally act on streetcar tracks and go without dressing rooms but they’re game, and because they have history and authorship over the work, the sacrifice is more meaningful than if they were just some hired guns.
BLADE: Audiences have an expectation, especially with a work they’re likely to know. How do they react seeing such an unadorned take on Williams’s American classic?
WESTRATE: For the first 10 or 15 minutes, they’re unsure. Then, you can pretty much see the audience members’ brains click in and their imaginations turn on. It’s like they’re scratching an itch that they didn’t even know they had.
BLADE: Did you and Lucy foresee gaining this kind of momentum behind your vision?
WESTRATE: Absolutely not. Lucy had a philosophy that we’ll just walk through open doors. Early on, we were given spaces and artists filled the seats, and increasingly we’ve begun to rent some spaces and attract more regular theatergoers.
We basically sell tickets in order to pay a living wage to artists involved. There isn’t some big institution or commercial producer who’s getting a lot of money from this. Audiences of all types seem to respond to this mode of making theater.
BLADE: In presenting “Streetcar” intermittently, usually with the same cast over three years in wildly varying venues, have you learned more about a piece that you already loved?
WESTRATE: Mostly I’ve come to realize that Blanche is the smartest character I’ve ever read in a play. She’s like Hamlet – tormented by dreams and terrified of death. She’s skilled at wordplay and always ahead of everyone else in the room. Also like Hamlet, people think she’s insane and she uses that to her advantage.
Blanche is certainly the Everest of roles for actresses and watching Lucy sort of break it apart in a different way than you’ve ever seen, and knowing that I’ve helped to facilitate this performance has been one of the great joys of my career.
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