CBS
Cee Lo Green could be a great performer if he would just stop taking himself so damn seriously, couldn’t he? Cee Lo, pictured here, performed with his Glee stand-in, Gwyneth Paltrow, in a Grammy Awards that featured several defining themes:
* Songs that have been featured in the past season of Glee
* Rihanna duetting with someone
* Highly processed production (Justin Bieber et al.) vs. low-fi musicianship (Mumford & Sons et al.)
* Big hair
* Things on fire
* Lady Gaga = Madonna + prostheses
* Lady Antebellum winning on the strength of “Need You Now,” a song designed to wake you up at 7:15 a.m. on a clock-radio at a Holiday Inn Express in Cincinnati
I’ll leave it to others, like my colleague Claire Suddath, to put it all in musical perspective for you. (My favorite: should-be-better-known-now Janelle Monae tearing it up on “Cold War.”) But let us know what you thought, and after the jump, enjoy the Elton John Muppet Show performance that evidently inspired Cee Lo:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL3mYAsEp9g]