Speaking at Sunday’s 2026 Grammy Awards, singer-songwriter/actress/multihyphenate Rita Wilson was understandably excited to discuss her new single “Sound of a Woman,” the title track from her forthcoming sixth studio album. But our red-carpet conversation also turned to the surprising sound of another iconic woman.

Two days earlier, Wilson had had the honor and delight of introducing the Foo Fighters and Taylor Momsen’s buzzy appearance at Mariah Carey’s MusiCares Person of the Year gala, where the Foos and the Pretty Reckless frontwoman performed, for the first time publicly ever by anyone, two tracks from Carey’s lost ‘90s grunge album.

“First of all, it must be so secret, because I tried to find it on the internet and I could not find it!” Wilson laughed, referring to the mythical Hole/Sleater-Kinney/Garbage-inspired LP that Carey secretly recorded in 1995. “It’s Mariah Carey’s grunge album that she did with her band Chick, called Someone’s Ugly Daughter. And the Foo Fighters, if you don’t know this, are amazing Mariah Carey fans — huge fans. And so, I think it was their idea to tribute Mariah in this way. And if you noticed at MusiCares, she was singing along to every word, stood up. It was fantastic!”

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Carey co-produced Someone’s Ugly Daughter with her friend Clarissa Dane, who was credited as Chick’s lead vocalist after Carey’s record label, concerned that the project would ruin the pop star’s glossy image, intervened. (Sony forced Carey’s original vocals to be stripped, and Carey was demoted to backup-singer status.) The long-out-of-print Chick record has sold for as much as $800 on resale sites like eBay, although Wilson was thrilled to learn that it has since resurfaced on YouTube.

“I think that the Foo Fighters and Mariah should redo the album and put it out,” Wilson proposed. “I actually think that was Dave Grohl’s idea when we were backstage. It was like, ‘I think we should do it,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes, 100 percent! Exactly!’” When it’s suggested that Wilson should also join the new Chick lineup, she brightened and quipped, “Oh, I’ll join Chick, absolutely! I’ll just play tambo. I’ll do it!”

In the meantime, Wilson is focused on readying her own deeply personal album, Sound of a Woman, out May 1. The titular single was co-written by Wilson and Amy Wadge (Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” Kacey Musgraves, Alicia Keys, Kylie Minogue, James Blunt, John Legend, P!nk, Mika, Noah Cyrus).

“It was partly inspired by this quote that I read that was on my bulletin board by Michelangelo, the famous Italian sculptor. And the quote was this,” Wilson explained, as the veteran actress prepared to break out her best Florentine Renaissance accent for dramatic effect. “People asked him, ‘How do you carve these incredible statues out of these huge chunks of marble?’ And he said, ‘I see the angel in the marble, and I carve until I set him free.’ And I thought to myself, ‘That is the perfect metaphor for what it’s like to be in this world.’ You’re born, you come into this world, you evolve your entire life, and you chip away and carve away the things that don’t really work, that aren’t really you, so that you can arrive at who you are. And that’s what the album’s about.”

The Instagram interview video above is courtesy of the Recording Academy.

Jeff Goldblum is one of his generation’s most beloved actors, known for his roles in both blockbuster popcorn-movie franchises like Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and Wicked and cult classics like The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and several memorable Portlandia episodes. But he’s also an acclaimed and accomplished jazz pianist, releasing four albums with his Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, who just announced a world tour playing some of their most prestigious venues yet.

So, when Goldblum and his wife, dancer and Canadian Olympic rhythmic gymnast Emilie Livingston Goldblum, briefly joined me on the red carpet on music’s biggest night, the 2026 Grammy Awards, I had to ask how he — unlike many “moonlighting” actors who shall remain nameless — was able to make such a credible transition to the jazz world and be taken seriously as a musician.

“You’re so nice. What a lovely question. Well, in a nutshell, yeah, we’re doing OK,” Goldblum said with his usual humble charm. “We’ve got our fifth album coming out on Decca, on Verve and Fontana, June 5. It’s called Night Blooms, and we’re the most proud of it of anything we’ve done. And we’re going to around celebrating with a tour — we’re going to the Sydney Opera House and to the Royal Albert Hall, with a 50-piece orchestra. So yes, as you say, things are going swimmingly.

“And how did that happen? I don’t know. It’s just very lucky. I feel at the height of my powers in acting, but at the same time, this thing has taken off — the seeds of which were planted when I was 10 years old and started to study,” Goldblum reflected (referring to his idolized other brother Rick, who died in 1971, and who instilled in him an early love of jazz). “I started to call cocktail lounges around Pittsburgh and tried to get jobs there, just as a fun thing, as I pursued [acting]. My heart was set on the acting career, so [the music career] has kind of blossomed unexpectedly and magically.”

That was supposed to be my only question, due to Goldblum’s tight red carpet schedule (he was set to co-present the Best Contemporary Country Album award that night on air with Lainey Wilson). But when I joked about the pressure of making sure my one allowed question was a good one, he had joked, “There are no bad questions, except the ones you don’t ask.” So, I couldn’t resist slipping in a second query, about a deep cult in his filmography:

“Will there ever be an Elephant Man musical?”

“Very good question — from The Tall Guy,” he chuckled with clear amusement. The 1989 British rom-com, which marked the feature-film debut of screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually ), starred Goldblum as a struggling American actor working who lands the title role in a Andrew Lloyd Webber-like London musical, based on The Elephant Man, called Elephant! — featuring numbers like “He’s Packing His Trunk,” “Here He Comes, Mr. Disgusting,” and the finale, “Somewhere Up in Heaven, There’s an Angel with Big Ears.”

“Well, Richard Curtis wrote that. He’s fantastic. And hey, as you know, I like the musical theater world!” laughed Goldblum, referring to his recent role as the Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the Grammy-winning Wicked and its sequel, Wicked: For Good. “I love David Lynch’s Elephant Man movie… who knows? Sounds good to me! If you’re involved, sign me up.”

As an editor’s note, I’ll mention that I have since learned that there was an Australia production called The Marvellous Elephant Man: The Musical, which ran in 2022-2023. But I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as entertaining as entertaining as Elephant!, because Goldblum didn’t take part. So, watch his space. And in the meantime, look out for Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra’s Night Blooms and tour dates later this year.

The Instagram interview video above is courtesy of the Recording Academy.

When Reba McEntire performed at the 2026 Grammys, held Feb. 1 at Los Angeles’s Crypto.com Arena, it was, incredibly, her first time ever singing on the Grammy stage. That alone would have made the occasion momentous, but McEntire (along with Brandy Clark and Promise of the Real’s Lukas Nelson, son of Willie) was tasked with one of the evening’s most daunting and important assignments: appearing in the ceremony’s In Memoriam tribute.

And this year, that segment hit especially close to home for Reba.

“I’ve got a lot of friends on that screen tonight. My oldest son, Brandon Blackstock, is also up there. He went on back in August,” McEntire told me on the preshow red carpet, referring to her talent-manager stepson. (McEntire was married to Brandon’s father Narvel Blackstock, for more than 20 years.) “So, it’s going to be a very emotional song to sing. But Lukas Nelson, Brandy Clark, and I will do our best to get through it.”

As the country queen steeled herself to perform a retooled version of “Trailblazer” — a song she cowrote with Clark and the track’s other two recording artists, Lainey Wilson and Miranda Lambert, as a way of “honoring the [country music] ladies who have been before us who have gone on” — she revealed that she could hear the voice of her stepson in her head. She knew that the talent manager, who died last August from malignant melanoma at age 48, would give her just the right tough-love pep talk she needed.

“I know Brandon would say, ‘Suck it up there, Mom! Get up there and do it,’” McEntire chuckled. However, when she was a coach on The Voice, she was used to helping her own contestants power through emotional and deeply personal performances. And she’d remember some advice she received from another dearly departed loved one, her mom Jacqueline, who died in 2020.

“I’ve always had a little trick that my mother told me: When you get a little emotional, look up at the ‘EXIT’ signs, and try to read it backwards,” McEntire revealed. “It gets you out of that moment of heartbreak when you’re just about to choke, and so you switch [in your brain], and then you stand and you can tend to business. That’s why you’re there.”

The Instagram interview video above is courtesy of the Recording Academy.

At the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, held Feb. 1 in Los Angeles, guitar god Nuno Bettencourt was in a fantastic mood as he spoke with me (and other remote reporters from around the globe) at the Recording Academy’s Virtual Red Carpet press box. And that was before he even won his very first Grammy, for his work on Yungblud’s “Changes (Live from Villa Park),” which took home the prize for Best Rock Performance.

Bettencourt had only been nominated one other time, at the 1991 Grammys for Extreme’s “More Than Words.” But this was an especially important honor, as Yungblud’s performance was taped at Ozzy Osbourne’s Back to the Beginning all-star tribute concert in Birmingham, England — where the Prince of Darkness sang live for the very last time, just 17 days before his death.

Yungblud’s Back to the Beginning performance — which included not just Bettencourt, but also fellow 2026 Grammy-winners Frank Bello (Anthrax, Helmet, Satyricon), Sleep Token drummer II, and Osbourne keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Adam Wakeman — was the breakout moment of the July 5 event. The fact that it was an unbilled appearance, that its arrangement was switched at the last minute, and that it was the only official single to be released from that concert, made the Recording Academy’s acknowledgement all the more special and meaningful.

“It was something that was crazy, because the night before we actually performed it, we didn’t really have an arrangement for it,” Bettencourt revealed. “The original was just piano and vocal, and I was like, ‘Why don’t we make this the “Purple Rain” version of this song? Let’s make it like emotional, and we include the band rocking.’ And we didn’t know it was going to touch people the way it did.”

While Yungblud has certainly had his share of haters, who’ve wrongly dismissed as some sort of pop-punk poser, the British rocker radically reinvented himself last year with his Idols opus, which also scored nominations for Best Rock Song (for “Zombie”) and Best Rock Album. However, it was his surprise Ozzy tribute in Birmingham that finally silenced many rockist doubters.

“He obviously came from the pop world initially, but I think he’s that kid that’s kind of like, when you’re around him, you feel the rock ‘b’ roll in him,” said Bettencourt. “And with the vocal performance he had that night on that song, I think changed his career — because the emotionality of it, it was touching, and it was magic.”

When I mentioned that what Queen was to Live Aid, Yungblud’s performance was to Back to the Beginning, Bettencourt marveled, “It’s incredible that you said that, because the text that we got when we got offstage was from a Queen member. It was from Brian May, who was in a box, and he said, ‘That performance really touched me.’”

As for Osbourne’s feedback and Bettencourt’s memories of that historic night, the guitarist said with a chuckle, “Well, the crazy thing is, back in the 1900s as a kid, when Randy Rhodes was still in the band and before he passed away in that accident, after he passed away, there was an ad in Circus magazine that Ozzy’s looking for a new guitar player. I think I was about 14 or 15. I’m like, ‘This is my gig! I’m getting this gig!’ So, I borrowed gear from my friends, played two Ozzy songs, sent it in. Every day after school, I was asking my mom, ‘Dd they call? Did they call?’ And I’m like, ‘No, really? They didn’t call me?’ So, then of course, Jake Lee got it. Ten years later, Ozzy reached out to my booking agent and said, ‘There is a jet waiting for Nuno at Heathrow. He’s got the gig.’ And as he’s telling me this, the only thing I could say is, ‘They heard the cassette!’ … To me, he’d finally heard it.

“And the last words that Ozzy said to me, when we were taking that photo [at Back to the Beginning last year], is he grabbed my wrist really hard and he said, ‘You are the only beep that said no to me. I think that’s pretty special.’ So, that’s the last thing he said,” Bettencourt added a bit more somberly. ‘We didn’t know we were going to lose him after that.”

Another way in which Bettencourt’s Birmingham experience was a full-circle career moment was — as a remote journalist from Music for Music People pointed out — Prince, whose “Purple Rain” inspired that day’s “Changes” arrangement, once declared Bettencourt one of the three greatest guitarists of all time.

“I am still in therapy because of it. I’m still in therapy, because he’s one of my idols, if not the top,” Bettencourt joked. “And yes, when he came to see me perform live and said that to one of my best friends after the show, they were messing with me: ‘We’re not going to tell you what he said!’ And that meant the world to me, because I have so much influence in the funk part of what Extreme is and everything that we did. And yes, this [Grammy] partly has to go to [Prince], because those are the words that came out of my mouth at rehearsal: “Let’s do the “Purple Rain” version of “Changes.”’ And that’s what it was. And I believe that that’s why it was as emotional as it was, as ‘Purple Rain’ was. We all cried. It’s one of my favorite songs of all time.”

As Bettencourt headed back the Premiere Ceremony learn the results of the Best Rock Performance category (which included worthy nominees Amyl and the Sniffers, Linkin Park, Turnstile, and Hayley Williams), Bettencourt already felt like a winner.

“[Osbourne] attended his own life celebration, his own funeral, his own everything. What a legend,” he gushed. “To me, the win was already that day. Whether we win or not [tonight], it’s beautiful thing to be here.”

The Instagram interview video above is courtesy of the Recording Academy.

Forty years ago, something totally awesome happened at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards — something that changed not only television, but the public’s perception of electronic music. That fateful evening, onstage at Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium, elder-statesmen keyboard icons Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock joined new-school new-wavers Thomas Dolby and the performance’s newest-to-the-scene participant, Howard Jones. Resplendent in billowing yellow satin while brandishing a keytar, Jones and his fellow synth pioneers delivered a futureshocking performance that has come to be known as the Great Synthesizer Showdown of ‘85.

“I think it was a very significant moment, because it suddenly changed the view of all this new technology that people were using,” says Jones. “It was like, ‘OK, these instruments are electronic, but it is just another instrument. There’s nothing to be worried about. They’re not going to take over your world and steal your children. It is just another way of working.’ And full stop, that thinking was dead after that show. … So yeah, it was a moment for me, and a moment for keyboard players and electronic musicians around the world.”

Jones went on to have a very good 1985 — racking up four top 40 U.S. hits, including two that made the top 10; playing Live Aid; and going platinum with his sophomore album, Dream Into Action, for which he wrote all of the songs and played most of the instruments. And yet, he was still dismissed by the so-called “cool press” as a manufactured (or simply too-cheerful) pop sensation. But four decades later, now it’s Jones who is an elder statesmen of electronic music — and any doubts about his abilities or talents have long vanished. He has continued to push himself creatively, be it with 2015’s ambitious multimedia ENGAGE! Project; 2019’s Transform LP (which featured three collaborations with logical successor BT); the pandemic-era song cycle Dialogue; or his new concert album, Live From the O2.

Below, the synth legend chats about his humble beginnings, the power of positivity, shattering stereotypes… and how he just might have accidentally invented the keytar.

LYNDSANITY: I’ve interviewed you before about your 1985 Grammy performance. It blew my mind when I first saw that. It was basically four frontmen — solo stars who also played keyboards — and that was unusual back then. Do you realize that was pioneering? Even now, there aren’t many synthesizer players that are up in the foreground, like you or Thomas Dolby were.

HOWARD JONES: That’s a good question. My big hero when I was growing up was Keith Emerson, and he was a frontman and keyboard player. He was like the Jimi Hendrix of keyboards, sticking knives in the keys and rolling over the stage with a Hammond on top of him — I mean, absolutely outrageous, but the most exciting thing ever. That’s where I got my biggest early influence, a keyboard player, that you can be the frontman and play keyboards. And I developed that idea with portable keyboards. They hadn’t made them at that time, but I strapped Moog Prodigy’s around my neck and played them. I had wires coming out and roadies used to feed them out to me! It was a way to not be that the guy with the glasses at the back of the stage that you never notice that plays keyboards. I did not want to be that. That wasn’t going to be me.

So, you invented the keytar, basically?

[laughs] They may have existed, but I wasn’t aware of it. But I knew I wanted to have keyboard and travel around the stage, so I just strapped it around my neck. And it was great. Then I could put it back on the stand when I’m done with it and play it normally. When they finally did come out with [real] ones, I jumped on that, and [keytars] have been with me ever since.

Photo courtesy of Howard Jones

If there are any pictures out there of you with a Moog strapped around your neck like a necklace, I’d love to see them! So, I don’t if the right word is “unfashionable,” but it was not really in vogue at the time to be the front keyboard person in the early ‘80s. Didn’t you have to put on your own record label showcase in London to get a deal? How did that go over?

Yeah, that’s right. It was very hard. … We organized to do a residency every Monday night for four weeks and invited all the record companies down, all the publishers down, to see me. … We weren’t based in London, we were outside in High Wycombe, which is a very ordinary town, with no cool scene going on there. You had to create your own. And [the music industry people] all came down and none of them got it. “One guy with a load of keyboards around him and a dancer? We can’t relate that to anything that we know has been successful in the past!” The typical thing of not being able to spot anything that’s original — until one guy did. But that was back in my hometown at the time. He came to a show and did get it and got the songs. His quote was, “We missed out on Depeche Mode. We’re not going to miss out on this guy.”

Related to the topic having difficulty getting record labels to understand what you were doing, I’ve read that you think you weren’t considered “edgy” enough then. A lot of songs from the new wave/post-punk era were kind of dark and miserable, but most of your material was anthemic or positive. I’d love your thoughts on that — why is being dark or miserable or depressed considered “chic,” but declaring that things could only get better or that you want an everlasting love isn’t?

Oh, I don’t where to start with that! I mean, it’s not that I didn’t like any of those [darker] bands or even the style of their writing, but it wasn’t who I was. And I didn’t even want to write love songs or anything. I wanted to write songs that were about philosophy. How do you deal with life and how do you be a successful human being? It seems ridiculously hard to do that. So, I wanted to write songs about that. And I wanted to be a cheerleader rather than a sort of sympathizer, if you know what I mean. We all go through pain and agony and stuff like that, but my thing was, “Don’t crack up. Bend your brain. See both sides. Throw off your mental chains. Let’s do it.” I had no problem at all with people who weren’t doing that, but that was just me. I liked songs where people were encouraging me as a young person: “You can do this, you can do this, you can do this.” And that’s where I wanted to come from with my music. Of course, that wasn’t considered “cool” at the time, so I was portrayed as a manufactured pop star in the “cool” press. What? Excuse me— I’m playing all the instruments myself on the record. I’m singing. I wrote the songs myself. I did the whole look myself. And you are saying I’m manufactured? But the great thing is that gives you such a good, strong spine, because you need to have that in this business. People will have a go at you at any opportunity… there’s people who want to knock you down, so you’ve got to be tough to keep going and stick to what you want to do.

But what about two of your biggest hits, “What is Love?” and “No One Is to Blame”? There is hope in those songs, but there’s a lot of melancholy too. They aren’t super-cheerful.

Yes, that’s true. But it’s still coming from that point of view. “No One Is to Blame” really, at the end of the day, is about how it’s really difficult being a human being, with all these things you have to cope with in your head, all the influences and all the pressures. And if you don’t have a view on it, you’ll go down a dark road. But yeah, I agree with you.

Do you consider yourself a generally positive, happy person?

I often think that, no — it’s almost like the opposite. I was very familiar with cynicism in my mind… and I didn’t want to be like that. I didn’t want to be a cynic. I wanted to be somebody who just fractionally is on the positive side — realistic, but with a hopeful attitude about getting out of it. Otherwise, you may as well just give up and forget it. But I didn’t want to do that. But I was very familiar with the cynical. I think maybe it’s part of British culture to be like that, which is maybe a bit of a problem that we have. That’s why I wanted to counteract it with what I was singing about.

You just mentioned how you wrote and played everything yourself. There were certain artists of your era where that was hyped by the press — Prince being the most obvious example — but then there were other cases, like with you and with George Michael in his early days, where that wasn’t really emphasized. And I wonder why that is. Do you think it was just the ‘80s vibe — the videos, the bright colors, the satin outfits, the keytar — that caused you to be taken less seriously at first? Like, if you’d just been sitting at a grand piano, would you have been received differently by critics?

Yeah, I often reflect on how those initial reviews and stories that are written about you, how they get embedded in the culture, and it’s so hard to break out of them. You have to spend the rest of your life trying to put the record straight. But maybe that’s a good thing, because I’m still doing it and I’m still very passionate about what I do to this day. Maybe I would’ve just sat back if people were going, “Oh, wow, he plays everything himself. He writes all his own songs. He’s doing things that nobody’s ever done before onstage.” If there hadn’t been that pushback, maybe I wouldn’t have had the impetus to keep going. And really, it’s important to carry on — that’s what it says in my lyrics, so I’ve got to be that!

Obviously I grew up in America, and you were huge here. You had nine top 40 hits in the States and were on MTV all the time. Were you bigger in the U.S. or England?

I was definitely bigger in America. Which was and is still unusual.

Do you think that because your hopeful lyrics resonated more with American listeners?

I think that’s a big part of it, and I love that. I’m very so pleased about that, that it was taken in a genuinely positive way.

But when you did Live Aid in 1985, you played the U.K. show, at Wembley in London. What memories do you have of that?

I don’t where to start, really! It was incredible day. Just literally flying in on a helicopter with Brian May from Queen was pretty epic. I hung out with Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney — not just saying hello, but for half an hour! I met David Bowie, who had been following my whole career. He was saying things about me that I just couldn’t believe, and that was massive for me. And then doing the song, you know who we were talking about me being the “synthesizer guy”? Well, I played piano, so people were going, “Oh my God, he’s going to play piano! This is going to be a disaster!” But I’d been playing the piano since I was 7; it was the most natural thing. And I did “Hide and Seek,” which was not one of my big hits. It was a song that I thought would be appropriate for the occasion. But the audience joined in with me on the chorus, and it was sublime. It was a sublime feeling that I still remember now, because it’s still there embedded with all the adrenaline that was going on.

I mentioned the “Synthesizer Showdown,” and I know you chuckled when I said that, but seriously, that’s my favorite Grammy moment of all time. No one had never seen anything like that. It must’ve been so exciting for you to be onstage with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock and Thomas Dolby, making history at the Grammys.

It was absolutely great. I think it was a very significant moment because it suddenly changed the view of all this new technology that people were using. Me and Tom were pioneering, but those guys [Wonder and Hancock] were using [that tech] as well. Stevie was known for his embracing of new keyboards and new technology and stuff. So, it was like, “OK, these instruments are electronic, but it is just another instrument. There’s nothing to be worried about. They’re not going to take over your world and steal your children. It is just another way of working.” I mean, on a Queen record, they said “no synthesizers were used in the making of this record,” all that stuff. It was pathetic. And full stop, that thinking was dead after that [Grammy] show.

And I got to hang out with Stevie in his studio and jam with him — just me and him. What an amazing thing to be able to say that you did. We were just trading riffs back and forth and jamming on various keyboards that he had around the studio. I’ll never, ever forget that. And Herbie is an amazing man as well. So yeah, was a moment for me, and a moment for keyboard players and electronic musicians around the world. I think it was a really significant moment. … [We] were bringing those instruments to the public and showing how they could be used, so I felt certain pride about that.

Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby, Stevie Wonder, and Howard Jones at the 1985 Grammy Awards (photo: YouTube)

Everybody plays some form of synthesizer or electronic instrument now. People create huge hit in their bedrooms on laptops. I kind of forgot about how at one time, keyboards were considered the enemy of rock. So, what was the mood in the room, at the Shrine Auditorium? I imagine there were a lot of old-guard record executives and musicians there. Were they looking at you guys thinking, “What the hell is this?” Or were they into it?

As far as I could tell, people were really enjoying it. It was so unique. I don’t know how many keyboards we had arrayed around us, but it was dozens. I hadn’t been to the Grammys before, so I wouldn’t know to compare it with anything else, but I certainly thought that people were really digging it and enjoying it. … And I didn’t feel intimidated, actually. I should have probably felt that a bit! But I think it was probably to do with the fact that I’d just hung out in the studio with Stevie and we’d jammed together and he kept going, so he must’ve enjoyed it. It wasn’t like he was grinding his way through; we were having fun, having this musical dialogue. And I’d grown up with his music, studying his music and learning to play his music. So, when we [successfully] jammed together, I kind of got over any sort of terror of being intimidated.

It’s interesting because electronic music in general, even now, doesn’t always get respect among rockists. It took six nominations for Kraftwerk to get in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Only one electronic artist, Daft Punk, has ever won a Grammy for Album of the Year. It’s sort of an open-ended question, but why were people so resistant? Why did they think that music just had to be guitar, bass, and drums? And there’s still people that feel that way, which surprises me.

I think I was shocked too. I always thought rock ‘n’ roll culture, pop-music culture, was the alternative: open-minded, embracing, not box-ticking. And I suddenly thought, “Oh my God, it’s the opposite of what I thought! People are not embracing change. They’re ridiculing new things. They’re not embracing new ideas. They’re not supporting young people doing new stuff.” I was a bit shocked with that, but that’s why you just have to keep going. You’ve just got to be who you are, and don’t compromise on that. Be who you are. Just do it. People will come and they’ll listen and they’ll like it. And if they don’t, they’ll listen to something else. It’s that easy.

Did you ever mention, when you were in that Live Aid helicopter with Brian May, like, “Hey, man, why did it say ‘no synthesizers’ on your record?” You had a captive audience…

[laughs] No, but I got to do band stuff with him when we were doing the Prince’s Trust concert. I was in the band. He was in the band and he was always really respectful to me and I felt very, very supported by him. He’s a very, very nice man. I don’t know where that came from.

I’ll just put this out there: Would you consider getting Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Thomas Dolby together and redoing it somewhere? You could maybe even do it with some younger synth players as well.

That’s a good idea! I mean, my friend BT, who’s like a genius keyboard guy — it’d be good to have him there. What a great idea.

Awesome! To wrap things up kind of where we started, we were talking about the anthemic feel of your records. Do you have any stories about people saying your music helped them through tough times?

Oh, yeah! So many that I wouldn’t know where to begin. I know it’s made a difference to people — and that’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s your legacy. It’s not anything else. It is not how many records you sold; it’s whether it had an impact on people. And I’ve had so many. There’s a song called “Specialty” on Dream Into Action that particularly really meant a lot to [many fans]: “‘Bout time you realized/You are a specialty/There is no one like you/Spend your life worrying/’Bout what you could have been/Can’t you like being you?” People felt liberated by that. That’s great. I’m so happy with that.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarify. Listen to audio of Howard Jones’s full conversation in the video at the top of this article.

The 2024 Grammy Awards ended a little over two months ago, but the Recording Academy is year-round operation when it comes to championing artists. So, as soon as those statuettes were handed out in February, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. turned his attention to an equally important awards ceremony: the Grammys on the Hill Awards in Washington, D.C., held April 30, which honored Sheryl Crow and Senators Amy Klobuchar and John Cornyn.

Grammys on the Hill is the Academy’s annual tentpole event, bringing together congressional leaders and music-makers to recognize those leading the fight for creators’ rights. And this year, for the first time in its 22-year-history, Grammys on the Hill expanded beyond its usual two days. May 1 was Grammys on the Hill Advocacy Day, when Mason and artists like Patti Austin, Lauren Daigle, J. Ivy, and Mark Ronson met with members of Congress and the Biden administration in D.C., and on May 3, the Grammys on the Hill Future Forum was held with the Human Artistry CampAIgn to explore the impact of artificial intelligence on the music community.

At both the White House and on Capitol Hill, conversations focused not just on how to protect creators from the risks of AI through No AI FRAUD Act, ELVIS Act, and the No FAKES Act, but on another hot industry topic: reforming the concert ticket marketplace to protect both artists and fans through legislation like the Fans First Act and the TICKET Act. It’s a lot to unpack, but if there’s anyone better to process it all with Lyndsanity, it’s Mason himself.

Speaking with us from his Studio City office, the Recording Academy CEO, music producer, and songwriter reflects about what Grammys on the Hill accomplished last week, what needs to be done in the future, how AI can be used for good as a creative tool, and why regular folks shouldn’t “have to work for months” to save up “for a darn concert ticket.”

You were just in D.C. with Grammys on the Hill. Tell me what that was like.

HARVEY MASON JR: We started on the Hill, which was amazing. At the Capitol Building, meeting with lawmakers, that was spectacular. It just felt really good to be in a position where we’re really talking to people that make a difference. We advocate all the time on all of our social media platforms and at the Academy level, and we host events and we gather for roundtables and we do summits, but being in the halls of the Capitol, putting our fists down on the desks of people who really vote to make change and impact the future of our community, felt like we were absolutely accomplishing great things. So, that was a great start to the day. We then went to the White House and spent some time there. It’s really, really exciting to be recognized and acknowledged and heard, to the extent where we’re walking the halls of the Oval Office and parts of the White House that everyone doesn’t get a chance to wander into. It was a really productive and exciting, fulfilling.

Everyone is worried about AI right now and how it could affect all of our jobs, and art in general, in the future. What are the biggest threats that AI poses to the music industry? What are your chief concerns?

That’s a long answer! In a nutshell, the acts in the legislation that we’re trying to get passed, or get sponsored and then ultimately passed, protect creators and their ability to control their image, their name, their voice, their performances. … We want to make sure that a singer’s voice is under the control of the artist, whether or not that artist chooses to utilize AI. And AI should be their choice. Whether or not they want to negotiate a fair right is their choice. They want to make sure they have credit, they want to have remuneration, they want approval rights. So, that’s the legislation we’re looking for. We’re not trying to ban AI. We’re not trying to say AI is the devil. We’re basically saying we need to have some protections, because left unchecked, the fear could be — and I’m not saying that this is going to happen — but the fear for some could be that AI could replace a lot of the creators. A lot of the people who are writing songs, a lot of the people who are singing, that are writing lyrics, these are all things that can be done by AI. And I know you could say the same for the banking industry or medical industry or other industries, and I agree with that; there’s going to be disruption across many different parts of our society. But when it comes to art and music and creativity for us at the Academy, we believe that human creativity needs to be preserved at all costs. We believe that AI absolutely will play a part in the future of music and creativity, and it should, because it’s a technological advancement that’ll allow us to do more and be more creative and do more cool things. We’re just of the belief that there needs to be some understanding, some guardrails, some protections in place, before we’re totally comfortable with it.

Have you witnessed any examples of things starting get out of control, something that made you realize the Academy needs to act now?

Yes. We’ve seen songs released under artists’ names that the artists had nothing to do with, created in their likeness and using the sound of their voice and the style of performing, all done without the artist’s acknowledgement and without them approving it. And [the AI version] could be singing lyrics that the artist doesn’t stand by. It could be doing styles of music that are disingenuous to the artist’s brand or something that they’ve established. So, there’s a lot of opportunity for bad actors to utilize this technology in a way that is not equitable to the creative community. In the same breath, I also have to say that there are a lot of opportunities for creative people, people that are pushing the envelope and doing cool new art, to use this technology to make something that is exciting and something we’ve never heard before, something that’s next-level.

Last year I interviewed Peter Gabriel, who’s obviously always at the forefront of art and tech, and he had an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” kind of attitude about AI. Basically, it’s not going away, so let’s figure out ways how to use it in cool ways, like you said. It seems you to agree with that, to some extent.

Well, I wouldn’t say we should throw in the towel, though. We’re not ever going to be able to beat it, and we’re not looking to beat AI. We’re looking to figure out how to make it work in conjunction with how we create and use it to advance, enhance, amplify what we do, not replace it. Much like Peter, I have also adopted new technologies: early drum machines, Pro Tools, synthesizers, samplers, sampling, streaming. These have all been things that have allowed more people to make cool music and more people to consume more art. AI will do much of the same. But much like the early days of sampling where you couldn’t just take a record and rap over it without there being some understanding of what the economics behind that were, that’s something that needs to be worked out. What are the copyright protections, when AI is going to be learning off of previously copyrighted works and replicating or duplicating or regurgitating information from those works into new works? What is the ownership model — who owns it? Is it copyrightable, even? Are there royalties due? These are all things that need to be worked out, similar to when there was illegal downloading, similar to when there was sampling, similar to all the other advancements in technology that we’ve gone through.

Change is always scary, and anytime there’s disruption in an industry, people that have benefited or been successful in the earlier versions of that industry are going to be hesitant to accept what the future will look like. But throughout musical history, technology has advanced or moved the business and the creativity forward. … You think about even the electric guitar, at one point people were like, “The electric guitar should not be used!” It has happened throughout time. The question is going to be, “Is this [AI] more extreme or more concerning than some of the other ones?” And I don’t know. We could debate that. But the issue at play here is, is the next generation of consumers going to be listening to music that is created by humans, or is it going to be created in a new way that’s collaborative with humans and technology together? Or is it going to be the completely drastic example, which is people are going to just type, “Make me a song that sounds like such-and-such,” and a song — or worse yet, a thousand songs — get spit out? And then that dilutes what comes out and ultimately reaches the consumer. Those are all the questions that we have to grapple with.

Have you ever asked AI to make a song that sounds like one of your songs, to see what would happen?

Yes, and it’s interesting how quickly parts of the song you’re referencing or the style of music that you’re referencing starts coming back in new AI generative works. … Like, I’ve gone through my whole library and pulled up songs that sound like lots of my songs. Sometimes I’ll just type in, “Make a song that sounds like an Underdog production,” because that was my production company. We had a very specific sound. And it will create music that sounds like it could have been produced by the Underdogs.

That sounds worrisome. But what are some of the specific cool ways AI could be utilized an as artistic tool?

Well, if you think about sampling — to use that same example — you had an original existing record, and you used it in a way that had never been done before. You used it in a way that no one thought of before. I’m imagining with AI, we’re going to be able to create unique chord progressions, strange song structures, sounds, and sonics that haven’t been created before, mashups of different genres that haven’t been imagined before. And then on the lyric side, when writing songs, sometimes you want more input. You need more information to help inspire you or trigger something or to give you some motivation. Entering things into AI and having it give you a paragraph about a subject, you might read that and get inspired. That sort of impetus or iterative creativity could be assisted by AI, and I think that’s really interesting. And then finally, there’s using AI and voice-modeling technology or voice-creating technology to make new sounds, new artists, new versions of songs already created by artists. If you were any random artist that wanted to sing in a different language, you could have your music instantly performed in a hundred different languages in five seconds, all sounding like you, all with the perfect accent, and then market that music to all those different parts of the world. And that also goes for legacy artists who have passed away and their estates are looking to find ways to continue the creative output of that artist — if you could do it tastefully and in a way that feels respectful, and is approved and monetized, then it could be a really cool way to hear some more great music from the artists that we love.

Or maybe if there was an incomplete song by a deceased artist, it could be finished this way. That’d be pretty cool.

Oh, it’s happening.

Another issue that Grammys on the Hill focused on was ticketing reform. There are multiple issues here: the junk fees and extra fees, high prices in general, problems buying tickets online, and scalping thing. What are you and the Recording Academy doing to address all these ticket-buying headaches?

We’re doing a lot, and part of being on the Hill was to advocate for those issues. One of the things we’re talking about is trying to find co-sponsors for bipartisan acts that we believe can solve some of these issues. One of them is called Fans First Act. It’s comprehensive. It’s across so many different areas of the ticket marketplace and talks about protecting not just the fans and the consumers, but also the artists and the small businesses and some of the venues. We’re trying to get people to support that and pass the TICKET Act because that’s a big part of what we believe will start to solve and fix some of the problems. Just being on the Hill and working with members of Congress to get that going would really, really mean a lot for I think what needs to be done around ticketing.

It’s interesting that problems with ticketing have been in the headline so much lately, probably because of high-profile artists like Taylor Swift and the Cure’s Robert Smith speaking out. But this is not a new problem. Pearl Jam literally 30 years ago this month went to Congress. Now, three decades later, the situation seems even worse.

Yeah. I’ve got to tell you, everywhere we went on the Hill, people were aware of it. I’ve never really met with as many members of Congress that there was such a united call for change. … Every one of them knew about the ticket issues. Every single one of them was like, “Yeah, we’ve got to get this worked out.” Most of them were all saying, “We had a subcommittee. I was on a subcommittee about this. We’re going to get this sorted out.” So, I’m pretty confident that even though it started 30 years ago, that this is going to be something that gets addressed in the near future.

Why do you think it’s coming to a head now? Is it because of those big artists speaking out?

It’s a really good question. I don’t know the answer as to why it’s becoming more of a thing. I like to think maybe because it’s something that we’ve absolutely been active in championing at the Academy. We’re 24,000 members and we also represent hundreds of thousands of music people across the country and around the world, and we’ve jumped up and down about this, that this needs to be addressed and it needs to be paid attention to. Yes, it might be because of some of the high-visibility artists out there talking about it. But also, on the positive side, think that it’s the excitement and the appetite for live music. It’s always been exciting to go to a concert, but coming out of COVID, there was an extra bit of energy and enthusiasm for taking in a live concert and having that human interaction with your favorite artists. So, maybe the perfect storm of all those things is going to come together to create the change that we need.

Tickets used to be like $20…

Now it’s $2,000!

Yes, and even club shows aren’t that cheap anymore. Enjoying live music shouldn’t just be a luxury for the privileged.

Yes, we were doing some remodeling at my house and the plumber who was working on the pipes, he found out that I worked in the music business and then found out I worked at the Academy. He is like, “Man, it’s so great to meet you. My daughter loves music. She’s been trying to get these tickets for two weeks. And I had to tell her we just couldn’t afford it.” And this plumber told me, “My daughter doesn’t know that I’ve been saving up for two months, and I’m going to surprise my daughter with these tickets.” This guy was doing plumbing work, saving money for two months so his daughter could go to a darn concert. And it just broke my heart. It inspires me and motivates me to try and find a solution, because that is not the way it’s supposed to be. … No one should have to work for months for a darn concert ticket.

Are you at all surprised that — given everything obviously going on in the world and in the country right now, in the middle of an election year as well — that people in D.C., from both parties, would be so interested in these issues? It’s great that they do, but I’d almost expect them to be like, “Who cares about your tickets and AI stuff? Go away!” But you’re getting the opposite reaction.

I’m not surprised, but I’m very thankful and appreciative. But I think it speaks to the influence and the ability for culture to make an impact, And politicians understand that having culture support you, if you’re a member of Congress or running for an office, is meaningful. But also, less cynically than that, most of the people we met with are just music fans. They love music and understand the power of music. Our work with the United Nations, our work with the State Department and exporting our music and using music as a diplomatic tool around the world, is something that means something to a lot of people in our country, not from just our general society, but also our leadership. They know what our music and our art means. So, protecting it and making sure that it’s a fair place for people to come in and create and make a business out of and make a living from is one of the things that I think our country is special about our country.

That’s actually an interesting point you made about making a living. There was a time when it was quite a doable to be a middle-class musician. You might not be Taylor Swift or the Rolling Stones or Beyoncé, you weren’t playing stadiums or selling millions of records, but you could make a decent living from touring, gigging, and releasing music. It has become much harder to making a living as a musician unless you’re an A-list superstar. Do you worry that the middle-class of the music business is being wiped out?

It’s a big problem, for sure. The working-class musician is a lot of who we’re talking about when we’re dealing with these issues. Because something like AI may look like it affects the big artists, but it actually affects the whole ecosystem. Think about any big artist and how many people they employ that go on that tour. Think about the mixing engineer that does the record, or the roadie, all the different roles that are affected by the ripple effect of something happening even at the high end of our industry. So yes, we’re concerned about all classes of musicians and music people, because we realize that what happens to the high-end artists has a massive impact on everybody that works with them and around them. It’s really a trickle-down from the top, and also a bubble-up from the bottom. We have to take care of both.

For more info, go to GRAMMY.com

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With the 2024 Grammy Awards taking place this week, I join Spectrum News’s “Inside the Issues” host Amrit Singh to discuss this year’s female-artist-dominated- Big Four categories and to get to the bottom of what exactly is “prestige indie.”

Check out the full segment HERE!

Ten years ago, at the 56^th Annual Grammy Awards on Jan. 26, 2014, Macklemore made history when he, his musical partner Ryan Lewis, “She Keeps Me Warm” singer-songwriter Mary Lambert, and special guest Madonna performed the gay rights anthem “Same Love,” mashed up with Madonna’s “Open Your Heart,” while Queen Latifah officiated a mass onstage wedding for 33 gay and heterosexual couples. (“I was really proud of that. That was really important,” Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich told me in 2017.)

Macklemore and Lewis also won four Grammys that evening, including Best New Artist (beating out Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran, Kacey Musgraves, and James Blake) and — more controversially — Best Rap Album. It should have been one of the biggest and best moments of Macklemore’s career. But the backlash was vicious and immediate.

Amid social media protest that Lamar’s critically heralded good kid, m.A.A.d city should have won Best Rap Album over Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s quintuple-platinum The Heist, Macklemore attempted to silence the haters — or, so  it seemed, perhaps silence his own inner voices of self-doubt and impostor syndrome — by posting a screenshot of private text he’d sent to Lamar on Grammy night agreeing that Lamar had been “robbed.” The move, however sincere or well-intentioned, backfired badly.

However, in 2022, while speaking with me about his work with CLEAN Cause, a yerba maté beverage company that supports individuals in addiction recovery, the alternative rapper and mental health advocate confessed that he barely even remembered the 2014 Grammys. The entire event was a “bit of a blur,” coming off a year-and-a-half whirlwind when The Heist took off on the strength of other hit singles like “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” — a time when Macklemore relapsed and then struggled to get back on track.

“Going into the Grammys, I wasn’t connected to it. I was in a place of fear, and I think that was a big part of why I responded to winning the Grammys in the way that I did,” Macklemore explained. “I got clean in ’08, and The Heist came out in 2012. I had a one-night relapse in those three and a half years of recovery, but I was prioritizing [my sobriety]. And then, The Heist came out. My world got really fast, really quickly. I stopped going to meetings. I stopped doing the steps. I stopped talking to a sponsor. I don’t even know if I had a sponsor at the time. All of these boxes you have to check to make sure that you stay clean, I wasn’t checking. And I lost it. It was a very weird time period. I look back on it, and there’s moments there when I’m just like, ‘I wish I would’ve been present for that. I wish that I wasn’t trying to escape during that time.’ Like, literally that [Grammy] night, I wanted to escape. I didn’t want to feel.

“That was a challenging time,” Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, continued. “I remember right before the Grammys, I got clean and I detoxed, and I had maybe three days clean before the Grammys. Maybe it was a little more than that, maybe it was like five days, but it was fresh. I wasn’t, like, dopesick going into the Grammys, but I had been escaping, and there was so much fear when using, because I’m not connected to my higher power. There’s no faith. When I start using drugs, I lose my faith and fear takes over. And that was the place that I had been in.  … And then after that [Grammy backlash] happened, I went right back to using drugs.”

However, Macklemore clarified that he never felt guilty for winning so many Grammys in 2014, nor did he ever feel like he didn’t deserve the honors — despite the apologetic and somewhat cringey message he sent to Lamar that night.

“I’ve never felt imposter syndrome,” the rapper insisted. “I know I make really good music that resonates with people, and I know why it resonates with people. And I won four Grammys! … I think at the time, yes, I thought Kendrick should have won Best Rap Album. But I wasn’t apologizing for the other three that I won; I think that they’re well-deserved. That was a fear-based decision because of where I had been, in terms of how I handled it. But I don’t feel an imposter syndrome at all. I’ve worked my whole life on my craft, and there’s a reason why those Grammys are on my shelf. There’s a reason why I’ve been able to resonate with human beings around the world and have a career. It’s because I’ve put in the sweat equity into something that I’ve been passionate about since I was 7 years old. I just think that there was so much drama and built-up tension, and me coming off of a relapse, that I didn’t know how to handle it at the time.”

Macklemore eventually re-entered treatment and got clean again, and now when he reflects on that Grammy whirlwind, he realizes it “catapulted me back into the rooms of recovery. So, I see the silver lining of that moment in time. I was able to hit that rock-bottom place and really tap back into gratitude, to faith, and to connecting to a power much greater than myself. And the freedom that comes from that is like no other.”

Macklemore maintained a steady and solid career, solo and with Lewis, after the Grammy telecast that simultaneously marked one of the highest and lowest points of his life. He never did replicate the surprise success of the independently self-produced, self-recorded, and self-released The Heist, but he apparently views that development as a great blessing as well.

“I’m really grateful for the place that I ended up in. I don’t ever want to be that level of famous again,” Macklemore stressed. “For me, being at that level of fame where everything that I did became a TMZ story, where every time I landed at the airport there was a group of people wanting me to sign things for eBay, where thinkpieces were being written about me… it was insane. It’s just not healthy for me. It takes that thick skin to just keep creating art, and that’s the place that I got to. There was absolutely a moment there where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if this is worth it,’ but I got back to a place of like, ‘Dude, I’m going to continue to rap. I’m going to continue to make music.’ The album after The Heist was a challenging one to get started on, but once we started on it, it was beautiful, even if it wasn’t received the same in terms of numbers and sales and all that and wasn’t nearly as big as The Heist. I came out the next year with [the solo album] Gemini, which did do well commercially, but it still wasn’t the same level of fame. And you know what? That was perfect. It was perfect.”

Macklemore even chucklingly recalled to me the time he curiously Googled his name right after he and Lewis’s much-anticipated, supposedly make-or-break The Heist follow-up came out in 2016. The query not only revealed that the industry’s first-week sales projections for that album, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, were an underwhelming 50,000 units, but pulled up a record review in USA Today that “had given the album like half a star out of five, or no star, something just like impossible!” Instead of panicking, Macklemore felt a sense of calm and relief.

“It was that moment when I felt the most free. I was like, ‘It’s over!’” he laughed. “That was a moment of freedom for me creatively, where I was reminded that at the end of the day, the critics actually don’t matter. I stopped Googling my name after that, and guess what happened? I got happier! I’m not thinking about USA Today. Like, who reads USA Today? Like, no one is going to usatoday.com to figure out what whoever wrote that article thinks about an album. And that’s a beautiful thing. It allowed me to get free.

“Now I’m just under the radar, but I’m able to do what I love and still get in front of arenas around the world filled with people that can sing these songs with me. And that’s what it’s all about.”

The 1998 Grammys were the most action-packed ceremony in the show’s soon-to-be-60-year history. Aretha Franklin pinch-hit for Luciano Pavarotti at the last minute on a performance of aria “Nessun Dorma,” often ranked among the greatest in award-show history. (Photo: Stereogum)

Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who died Thursday at age 76, delivered countless stunning television performances over her more than 60-year career, but one of them came later in life: her Grammy Awards rendition of “Nessun Dorma” in 1998. And it almost never happened. Luciano Pavarotti was supposed to sing the aria, but when he canceled at the last minute, Franklin stepped in, stepped up, and saved the day.

Grammy telecast producer Ken Ehrlich recalls the chaotic but ultimately historic moment fondly.

“Pavarotti had come in, rehearsed with us the day before, and I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be in the show,” Ehrlich tells Yahoo Entertainment. “So, we were well into the show. Not that at that point I had realized that he wasn’t there. But my assistant Ron Basile came running up to me — I live underneath the stage during these shows, because that’s where I can see and talk to both the artists and the presenters — and he ran up to me with a torn off little piece of paper with a phone number on it and said, ‘Would you please call Mr. Pavarotti? He wants to talk to you.’ Which of course seems strange to me, because he should have been in the building.

“So I called him, and I’ll never forget it. It was a brief conversation: ‘I am sick and I cannot come and sing for you. I will come and sing for your next year.’ Which I said — to myself, not to him — ‘That’s great, but what the f*** am I going to do now?’”

Ehrlich, rushing to fill a “four-and-a-half-minute hole with a 65-piece orchestra, 30 singers,” considered asking Steve Wonder, who was on the show that year, to step in. He also thought that Sting, who had been slated to present Pavarotti’s performance that night, could serve as a replacement. “And then, I remembered that two nights before, Aretha had sung ‘Nessun Dorma’ for Pavarotti at MusiCares.”

Franklin, who had famously performed “Think” in 1980’s The Blues Brothers musical comedy, was set to appear on the Grammy telecast to promote that movie’s sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 — and she was already at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, where the 1998 Grammys took place. Ehrlich went into crisis-control mode.

“I ran up two flights of stairs. I grabbed [Pavarotti producer] Phil Ramone, who had produced MusiCares’ [Person of the Year gala] that year. I ran up to this cramped little broom closet of a dressing room. We knocked on the door, walked in. And she’s sitting there. Frankly, sitting there eating fried chicken, which did not surprise me, because I had often shared food with her. And I just said to her, ‘Look, we have a problem. How would you like to sing twice tonight?’ And she sat there and one of those ‘Aretha looks’ that I would get from time to time, like, ‘What are you saying to me?’ And then she said, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’”

Still, some adjustments had to be made. “She said, ‘But Ken, what about the key? Three keys. I think he sings it three keys different from me.’ So we scrambled, and we got Pavarotti’s conductor, who was there and had learned at the same time that Pavarotti wasn’t coming. And we found a boom box — we always recorded rehearsals and things, but this was in the days of cassettes, you know — we put it on the counter in the dressing room. And she spent the next 45 minutes working with Pavarotti’s conductor. We tested the key and she said, ‘I can do it. It won’t be easy, but I want to do this.’”

Later, when Franklin saw the set with the massive orchestra ready to go, she told Ehrlich, “This is gonna be fun.” Says Ehrlich, “And it was. It was amazing.”

Ehrlich actually made a rare departure from his home base underneath the Grammy stage to watch the moment firsthand. “I stood at the side of the stage; I wanted to see the audience reaction when she finished,” he explains. “And honestly, there was a stunned silence for a minute — and then all of a sudden, the applause erupted.”

Recalling the performance itself, Ehrlich marvels, “You can almost see it in her [when you watch video of the performance] — she gains confidence during this number. I didn’t realize that until I watched it a few times. She’s not tentative, because Aretha’s never tentative about anything, but as she sings the song, she just gets more and more confident in that. At the end, she ‘Aretha-fies’ the ending, and it’s like, ‘I now own this.’”

Ehrlich and Franklin didn’t reconnect the night, but they spoke on the phone the next morning, both now realizing the significance of what had transpired.

“It was an incredible moment where you realized that you have affected someone’s life and that in the end it really means something to them,” he says. “You know, with all of the things that she has accomplished in her life, for her to say to me, ‘This is one of the highlights of my life; I’ll never forget last night,’ it was really something. As close as we had been, because we had done a number of shows together before, that was a bonding experience that we were to share the rest of our lives.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.

Two days later, still high on the excitement of the Grammys, the Resistance Revival Chorus has released their first single to commemorate the first anniversary of the Women’s March” a cover of Lesley Gore’s 1963 proto-feminist classic “You Don’t Own Me.” The recording is available for free download from WeTransfer and on all streaming platforms, with fans encouraged to donate and support Tarana Burke’s organization, metooMVMT.org.

We asked Resistance Revival Chorus singer Meah Pace, who shares lead vocal duties with Broadway singer and educator Abena Koomson-Davis on “You Don’t Own Me,” to speaks with us about her Grammy experience, her own battles with sexism in the music industry, and how Kesha’s bravery has helped the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

Yahoo Entertainment: Tell me what the vibe like was during rehearsal of this performance. It must have been very emotionally charged.

Meah Pace: Oh, it was wonderful to be around people who I could tell loved Kesha very much. Her mom was present a lot of the time. Her vocal coach seemed to be very close to her and hugged her a lot. It was just a very warm, family environment. You could tell that Kesha understood the gravity of what she was about to do. You could feel the energy when she walked in the room. She made it a point to speak to us and hug us and thank us every day for supporting her on this. There were some tears of joy and just a lot of hugs and a lot of singing. Those days of rehearsal are some of the most fun times I’ve had as a singer.

Beside Kesha herself, do you have any other fond memories of the other all-stars you worked with?

Well, on our rehearsal day last Thursday, we gathered around the piano, and Cyndi Lauper, I mean… such warmth! She is so invested in this movement and in women. She was so nurturing and so mama-bear. She really cared about us and what we’re going through as female artists. She was the one who said, “Yes, this is all of our story.” She made it a point to hold our hand and look at us all and hug us. I really, really felt that from Cyndi Lauper. She was a huge force of energy and support in all of this.

It’s interesting that you say the rehearsal was fun, because when I watched the performance, I felt so much anger in it.

Yeah, it was heavy. It was emotional. She did have some rage, I’m sure. But this was now our time. This performance was not about the abuser. This was not his time to shine. This was our time to shine, to be uplifted, and to say, “We are not going to be victims anymore. We are going to take control of our situations, and we are going to fight back. We’re going to rise above this, o be the bigger person.” So I’m going to maybe remove the word “anger,” and say “power” and “triumph” instead. The specific song, “Praying,” it’s also about empathy and really coming out of this darkness, this really tumultuous time for her and for her fans. [Her legal battle] was tough to watch. I’m a Kesha fan. I wasn’t just up there singing. I’m also a fan of hers and her music — so to watch her have gone through this was just sickening. Also, as a musician, a female musician, it was my story. It was everyone’s story. We’re all here telling our story. It was so important for us to all do that.

Have you faced, as a female artist, any kind of misogyny in the business?

Yes, all the time. I remember specifically one point in my career where I was working with a gentleman who was helping me a little bit, as far as production, and he said to me, “You know, the reason you haven’t made it yet, and the reason why you probably aren’t going to make it too far, is because you just aren’t [sleeping with anyone.” I was just like, “What? Are you saying this to me? Out loud?” I didn’t know if he was sort of setting me straight because he maybe thought I was naïve about the business, or maybe because he had no hope for me as an artist and my talent — or maybe he knew that I was talented, but because I wasn’t opening my legs to anyone, this was just not going to work out for me. I was just like, “Wow. OK. All right, cool.” Needless to say, I never worked with him another day after that. That was it for me. I didn’t care what he could do for me at that point.

Things like that happen to me all the time. When I do my own personal projects, I have to do my own business. I will make contact with people and do the business over the phone, via email, things like that. But when I get to the show, someone hands an envelope with several thousand dollars in it, with my name on it, to my [male band member] — because he’s the dude. To me, as a business person, that is a slap in the face. That has happened to me more than two or three times. People just assume; they look for the guy who looks like he’s in charge, and they talk to him. I am the boss when I’m doing my own music, I’m the one in charge, but they don’t naturally walk up to me, because maybe I have on heels or lipstick. Happens all the time.

I’m also a touring musician and I get this [treatment] on the road, after the show. Guys feel they can paw all over you and hug you. This one guy asked me could he smell my hair. “Oh, what are you doing after? Can I take you out to my hotel?” Just all of that. These are people in the industry, not even fans. I had a handler once in another country. We were sitting in the lounge, thanking him for doing things for us, and I’m having a really great time, and then he just reaches down and sticks his tongue down my throat! I was disgusted. I got up. I walked out. I was like, “I can’t do this.” I mean, it’s everywhere.

The Resistance Revival Chorus (Photo: Grandstand Media)

Yes, and it has been going on for decade, but it’s coming to light in a way it didn’t before, due to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. I kind of feel if Kesha had come forward with her Dr. Luke allegations in the past six months, instead of in 2014, people would have listened to her much more. How do you feel about the fact that things seem to be kind of finally coming out, that other “Keshas” are coming forward?

Well, I can be nothing but proud and happy that it’s finally becoming such a huge force. With any civil rights movement… I mean, I’m a black woman, and I come from children and parents of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s. You’ve got to start somewhere. If there was no Kesha, and if there were no women like that who had to take some bullets for the rest of us, the wall would not be coming down. It may never come all the way down in my lifetime. You have to chip away at it. There have to be some people who are willing to take those hits first and really get hurt — really get hurt. And no, she didn’t ask for this, but Kesha could have done a lot of things with this. Kesha could have taken this and been defeated by it. I don’t blame any woman who has been defeated by it. This mess is hard.

And you’re right, this isn’t new. There are plenty of women before Kesha, and before Cyndi Lauper, and before everyone, who have gone through this in the industry, who decided, “You know what? This is too much. I’m going to stop singing. I’m just going to go be something else. I’m just going to make sure my family’s OK and I’m going to move on. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stay out of the press and the limelight.” There are plenty of women who have done that — and I respect them too. But Kesha decided to take what happened to her, which was not a choice, and she decided to make a choice to help the people that come after her. She decided not to be defeated by this and to take it and to pay it forward to the rest of us, so that the movement will become stronger. It’s because of Kesha and people like her that I will have a career, you know? It is that. It is paying it forward. It is taking the beating for sisters or somebody else. I could be nothing but grateful. It makes me all the more motivated to keep going because someone had to go through something so that I could be here.

Kesha’s Grammy performance was really inspiring, but the overall night was still disappointing in terms of gender equality. Kesha and a lot of other amazing women — P!nk, Kelly Clarkson, and Lady Gaga — all lost in the Best Pop Solo field to Ed Sheeran, to a song literally about the shape of a woman’s body. And Lorde, the only female nominee for Album of the Year, was not invited to perform solo. Then of course, there were these backstage comments from Recording Academy president Neil Portnow about how “women need to step up” if they want to win awards. The industry still has a long way to go.

Yes, we have got to do better. Not “we” meaning women. I mean as an industry — they have got to do better. Now that women are opening our mouths on a larger scale, we are shouting from the rooftops. We’re singing. We are getting in people’s faces. Artists are really getting on these global stages and not being afraid to open our mouths, so no one can say anymore, “I didn’t know how you felt. I didn’t realize women weren’t being awarded. I didn’t realize that women weren’t being invited. I didn’t realize!”

What I’ve learned just being a part of activism and things like that, whatever you do has to be intentional. Things aren’t going to happen by accident. You have to exactly say exactly what it is you want. That’s what we’re doing. We’re not going to let people figure it out. We’re not going to let men figure out that women are not winning these awards, because they’re not going to notice it. We have to tell them, “Look. This is what’s happening, and this is what we want. We want Lorde on the stage. This is what we want!”  Then when we continue to ask and demand what we want, then if people don’t respond, they’re going to look like the jerks. They’re going to look like they’re stuck in the Stone Age. What I’m finding is that either you’re going to get on board, or you’re going to get steamrolled. We’re going to roll right over you. So it would behoove everyone to just get on board with this, because it’s getting bigger and it’s moving. So yeah, we’re angry.

And you’re saying we need to step up? What do you think we’ve been doing? But you know what, we don’t expect you to get it. We are enough. We are enough. We are our own advocates. We are our own heroes. We can speak for ourselves. We don’t need to be invited. We’re going to come and step up and we’re going to do this anyway. So if he doesn’t get it, if he doesn’t see that we are speaking up, that we are stepping up, that we are mad, and that we are using our voices and organizing, and being loud and being angry… If he doesn’t get that, that’s his problem, not ours.

Kesha’s performance ended with a big group hug, and everyone seemed on the verge of crying. What was the vibe like when you got offstage and had a moment to process what had just happened?

Well, I burst into tears immediately when I stepped off the stage. When I was onstage, I had to be a professional and do what I was supposed to do in order to not mess up the show — there was a lot riding on everyone holding it together to do a great job — but it was very emotional, so as soon as I got backstage, that was my time to just let it go. I hugged the girls, and I got a chance to just really feel it. I really felt it. I really felt that I moved people, that I touched somebody, that I changed somebody’s life — that there’s some little girl out there saying, “Wow, I can be a singer. Wow, I can work with other women. I can work with women writers and producers and artists, and we can stand onstage and not be catty and root for each other and support each other and not slut-shame each other.”

We’re standing up here, and we’re going to show our faces. We’re not ashamed. When you have a cause and you have a message and you’ve been through something, it doesn’t always go this well. I know that. Kesha knows that. People will come at you and blame you for everything: “How dare you use the Grammys as this platform! How dare you!” People will try to take your joy and take your moment. But we couldn’t have that fear. We had to just do it. We did it for each other, and that’s where that hug came from. We did it for each other. We were there for each other. We were there for Kesha, and for all the women who have experienced that.

Tell me about the Revival Resistance Chorus’s single, a cover of Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.”

It’s a message, a strong message. It’s what we wanted to get out first, to get moving with this movement. We as individuals, as women, have to be confident and know that we own ourselves. We own our bodies. We own our minds. And it’s OK for us to choose to not be victims. That gives us the strength and the courage to continue with this movement. We’re about community. We’re about taking up for each other and speaking for each other. So that’s what this is about. It’s about all of us standing together and really having a voice.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.