Grammys commentary

QUESTIONS FOR THE GRAMMYS “BRAIN TRUST”: This has been Justin Timberlake’s year, but you’d never know it from the Grammy nominations, which went public on Friday night. Will he perform on the Grammys telecast after being cock-blocked in the Best Album, Song and Record categories—possibly because he played the AMAs? Will Timberlake swallow his pride and do the show or take a stand in an effort to help clean up what looks like one hell of a mess? How pissed off are Interscope and Lava/Republic over the incomprehensible slights of Imagine Dragons and Lorde slight for Best New Artist? Did the Grammys threaten to ban Macklemore from the 2014 show if he performed on the AMAs, and did they back off from that position, knowing it would make them look even more clueless than they do now? Does CBS have too big a voice in who’s getting the nominations, as some are saying—and since when does the network have any influence on the process? Who is in the room and making the decisions on the nominees? What happened to the rank-and-file NARAS members’ votes? Is it any wonder that cries of hanging chads and an utter lack of transparency are making their way around the biz? Are some of the more powerful people in the industry going to try to do something? In short, have the Grammys jumped the shark? Industry insiders are looking for Neil "the fixer" Portnow to find a way to prevent a travesty of this magnitude from happening EVER again. Does the soft-spoken Recording Academy topper have the power and guile to seize control of what is clearly an out-of-control situation? Let’s hope the answers to these pressing questions are forthcoming. (12/12p)