56th Annual Grammy Awards

• 1. Introduction

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  The 56th Annual Grammy Awards arrived under unusual circumstances on the 26th of January 2014. To avoid clashing with the Sochi Winter Olympics, the Recording Academy pushed the show to January, a scheduling shuffle it had made once before in 2010. Staples Center in Los Angeles filled with industry royalty that night, and LL Cool J took the stage as host for the third time. But the real drama belonged to a French electronic duo, a teenage singer from New Zealand, and a rap duo from Seattle who turned their biggest night into a political statement. What would Daft Punk's sweep look like? How young was Lorde? And what exactly happened when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis brought a mass wedding to the Grammy stage?

• 2. Daft Punk's Clean Sweep

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  Random Access Memories arrived at the ceremony with enormous expectations and left with five trophies. Daft Punk took Album of the Year for the record, a category in which they had also been nominated alongside Sara Bareilles, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. The French duo also won Record of the Year for "Get Lucky," sharing that award with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers. Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Dance/Electronica Album added to the haul, and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical completed what the source describes as a clean sweep for the project. Sound engineer Bob Ludwig, who worked on Random Access Memories, walked away with five nominations total, more than any other non-performing artist at the ceremony. Ludwig also won Best Historical Album for his mastering work on the Rolling Stones' Charlie Is My Darling, giving him multiple wins across very different parts of the show.

• 3. Lorde at Seventeen

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  "Royals" won Song of the Year, written by Ella Yelich O'Connor and Joel Little. That writing credit belongs to the artist who performs under the name Lorde, and she was 17 years old at the time, making her the youngest winner in the Song of the Year category in Grammy history. She also took Best Pop Solo Performance for the same song, beating out Sara Bareilles, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, and Justin Timberlake in that field. Pure Heroine, the album the song came from, was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album, though that category went to Bruno Mars for Unorthodox Jukebox. Joel Little, who produced and engineered "Royals," with Stuart Hawkes as mastering engineer, shared the Record of the Year nomination with Lorde but did not take home that prize.

• 4. Macklemore's Political Stage

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  Macklemore and Ryan Lewis won four trophies on the night, including Best New Artist, Best Rap Album for The Heist, Best Rap Performance for "Thrift Shop," and Best Rap Song for the same track. Their performance drew the most attention of the evening for reasons that went beyond the music. They performed "Same Love" on the Grammy stage to accompany a mass wedding of gay and heterosexual couples, an event presided over by Queen Latifah. Madonna also appeared during the performance. The songwriting credit for "Same Love" lists Ben Haggerty, Ryan Lewis, and Mary Lambert, and Mary Lambert joined the performance on stage. The moment registered as a public show of industry support for marriage equality at a time when the debate was still active nationally. Jay-Z received the most nominations at the ceremony with nine, but did not win in the general categories.

• 5. The Nomination Landscape

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  The eligibility window for the 56th Grammys ran from the 1st of October 2012 to the 30th of September 2013. Nominations were announced on the 6th of December 2013 during a live televised concert on CBS called The Grammy Nominations Concert Live. Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and Pharrell Williams each received seven nominations. Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams were each nominated twice in both Album of the Year and Record of the Year, a double-dip that underlined how thoroughly that pair of records dominated conversations that year. Pharrell Williams also won Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, a craft award that reflected his presence across many of the nominated records. His production credits that year spanned work for Jay-Z, Robin Thicke, Destiny's Child, and Jennifer Hudson, among others.

• 6. Category Changes and New Fields

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  On the 4th of June 2013, the Recording Academy formally approved a set of structural changes that reshaped the Grammy category list. The changes brought the total number of categories to 82, up from 81 the previous year. A new songwriters' award called Best American Roots Song was added to recognize composers working across Americana, bluegrass, blues, folk, and regional roots music. The winner in that inaugural category was "Love Has Come for You," written by Edie Brickell and Steve Martin. Separately, Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance was split into two distinct categories: hard rock performances would be screened under Best Rock Performance, while Best Metal Performance became a stand-alone award. Black Sabbath won that newly independent metal category for "God Is Dead?" The Music Video field was also renamed the Best Music Video/Film field, with the individual sub-categories updated to Best Music Video and Best Music Film.

• 7. Honors and Tributes

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  Carole King was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year on the 24th of January, two days before the main ceremony. Sara Bareilles and King performed together during the broadcast, with Cyndi Lauper introducing them, and the two artists then jointly presented Song of the Year. The Lifetime Achievement Award went to The Beatles, Clifton Chenier, The Isley Brothers, Kraftwerk, Kris Kristofferson, Armando Manzanero, and Maud Powell. The Trustees Award recognized Rick Hall, Jim Marshall, and Ennio Morricone. The inaugural Music Educator Award went to Kent Knappenberger of Westfield Academy and Central School in Westfield, New York. Among those who appeared in the In Memoriam segment were Lou Reed, Phil Everly, Ray Manzarek, and George Jones, reflecting the significant losses the music world had absorbed in the months before the ceremony.

• 8. Digital Firsts

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  The 56th Grammy Awards were the first in the show's history to incorporate what the Recording Academy called comprehensive live-GIF integration through Tumblr. The creative agency Deckhouse Digital produced more than 50 animated GIFs during the live broadcast and published them to the official Grammy Tumblr page in real time. Grammy-related posts on Tumblr received more than 5.1 million reblogs and likes. Combined social media interactions related to the broadcast reached 34 million, a record figure at that point in the show's history. The ceremony was broadcast on CBS starting at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time, the same network that carried the nominations announcement six weeks earlier.