I watched the 2010 Grammy Awards last night. It was unique among most recent Grammy Awards telecasts in that I watched it. Other than that, it was pretty much exactly what you’d think. Here are a few highlights, as well as a bunch of lights glued directly to the middle of the road, right where Grammy likes them.

I couldn’t tell which X-Men character Lady Gaga was dressed as during her “Poker Face/Speechless/Your Song” duet with fellow subtlety enthusiast Elton John. Dazzler? Ariel? Blink? It’s on the tip of my tongue. The Grammys rewarded one of the night’s most entertaining performances by shutting Ms. Gaga out of most major category she was nominated for. It’s not a total wash – she won a couple dance categories, and maybe John’s stamp of approval will finally win her some gay fans.

I had my first “holy shit” moment of the evening during the “Best Country” award when they showed Keith Urban among the nominees. I didn’t know he was a country artist. It’s a little embarrassing, but I’d never heard his music before and I think the last name threw me. Part of my brain is still stuck back “in the day” when mall record stores put all the R&B and soul and hip hop artists – anybody who was black and not Lenny Kravitz – into the “Urban” section. My lazy racist brain just conflated him with Keith Sweat, but to my knowledge Keith Urban has yet to record anything that swings, New Jack or otherwise. I also didn’t know Taylor Swift was supposed to be a country singer, though I had heard her song plenty of times.

Green Day sang with the cast of the American Idiot Broadway musical. I don’t have any jokes about this. They’re making a Broadway musical out of a Green Day album, and Green Day performed with the cast at the Grammys. Those are facts.

Beyonce gave Lady Gaga a run for her scary dystopian future with her performance, an Alanis Morissette-quoting version of “If I Were a Boy” featuring a phalanx of Robocops. Kudos for recognizing that we’ve all heard “Single Ladies” a million times, Ms. B, but nobody really needs to hear “You Oughtta Know” ever again. Still, it’s Beyonce – she could sing a Green Day song and it’d be at least halfway decent.

There were a slew of lifetime achievement awards mentioned over the course of the evening, almost all of them making for fairly awkward moments. A presenter would mutter under their breath about someone legendary, they’d show a couple pictures, maybe a quiet smattering of applause and then the audience was graced with the thrill of something like Seal segueing gracelessly from a nine-second overview of Leonard Cohen’s career to introducing Pink and her goofy Cirque Du Soleil routine. The lifetime achievers, by and large doing a good job detecting bullshit, aren’t showing up for the award (though I guess I can understand it in, say, the late Bobby Darin’s case).

Oh yeah: Pink’s goofy Cirque Du Soleil routine was actually fairly rad:

The Best New Artist category once again featured at least a couple of artists (including MGMT and Silversun Pickups) who have been around for several years. Zac Brown Band, a country group whose members originally bonded over a shared love of eating and growing beards, drew the short straw and won the award/kiss of death. Look for big things to come from these guys over the next couple of years. Ha! Just kidding; if past is prologue they’ll be back on unemployment by 2012.

The Black Eyed Peas tagged on a miserable new single as an intro to the mammoth outlier in their catalogue, last year’s shockingly infectious “I Gotta Feeling.” Maybe “Imma Be” sucked all their energy out the way it did mine, but the Peas seemed almost as tired of “I Gotta Feeling” as most of the rest of the world, going through the motions in their Salute to Rejected G.I. Joe Villains costumes (complete with Shitty Transformers backup dancers). The Pea with the long hair isn't even hiding the fact that he doesn’t do anything these days – I used to think he was maybe the choreographer or something, but you’d think the choreographer would at least dance.

Steven Colbert won the very competitive Best Comedy Album category. They cut to his teenage daughter sitting in the audience a couple of times. My brain did the following the following things in rapid succession: 1) “Wow, Steven Colbert has a daughter!” 2) “Wow, Steven Colbert’s daughter is older than I thought she’d be!” 3) “Wow, Steven Colbert’s daughter is kind of hot!” 4) “Wait, how old exactly is she?” Then, remembering the dark day I googled Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat, I sent my brain somewhere else for awhile.

Lady Antebellum performed a song. That's all I have to say about that.

Kings of Leon won Record of the Year (a category different from Song of the Year on account of it just is) for that “YOOS somebawday!” song about cousinfucking. The Grammy folks were surprisingly fascist about cutting off the mics during the speeches this year, but to be fair, nobody wants to hear Kings of Leon's bass player thank the record label publicist the drummer forgot to mention, and also God.

SPEED ROUND!

- It took Jaime Foxx, T-Pain, Doug E Fresh, Slash, a couple of opera singers and a bunch of flashing lights and explosions to bring the show’s “pointlessly ridiculous” levels to normal.

- Green Day beat out AC/DC, U2 and Eric Clapton for “Best Rock Album Made By Men Aged 40-70,” shortened this year to “Best Rock Album”

- Zac Brown Band joined forces with Leon “Fat Gandalf” Russell for a song that was exactly long enough for me to take a dook.

- I didn’t know there was a “Best Rap/Sung Collaboration” category. I can’t think of anything more Grammys.

- Jon Bon Jovi: if you can no longer hit the high notes in “Livin’ On a Prayer,” BREAK UP YOUR FUCKING BAND.

Taylor Swift’s performance finally gave me the opportunity to hear part of one of her songs that isn’t “You Belong With Me”. I still couldn’t tell what’s supposed to be “country” about her, unless I missed something and Natalie Merchant was a country singer. And I know she’s adorable and Kanye was all mean to her, but last night she couldn’t hit a note to save her life. Stevie Nicks (apparently halfway through her transition from sorceress to troll) came out halfway to sing part of one of her songs, and they finished off with a legitimate “country version” of “You Belong With Me.” I hate to strain so hard to put a label on the girl, but if she’s going to win a damn Grammy for being a country singer, the songs she wins for shouldn’t have to have ALTERNATE “country versions.”

Celine Deon, Usher, Smokey Robinson, Jennifer Hudson and some blonde sang Michael Jackson’s aggressively unbeloved “Earth Song.” CBS urged me to put on my 3-D glasses before the performance. It’s presumptuous enough of CBS to assume anyone’s going to watch the Grammys; now we need special glasses? I also could’ve done without them dragging out Jackson’s children again to accept some sort of made-up award on his behalf. It’s creepy! And is it cool to talk openly about how he’s clearly not their biological father? If they keep getting trotted out to awards shows the statute of limitations for tasteless observations runs out a lot quicker.

Later in the evening, former Fugee / current Former Fugee Wyclef Jean got up to introduce Andrea Bocelli and Mary J. Blige’s tribute to Haiti. Jean used his time to remind the viewing audience that, even though the devastating earthquake was several weeks ago, people should never stop paying attention to Wyclef Jean.

A bearded jerk-off moonlighting as a music executive got onstage and gave a rambling speech that included the argument that people who pirated music were threatening the survival of many of the musicians in the room. When you’re following a tribute to the victims of the natural disaster in Haiti, you don’t really want to throw around the word “survival” like that. I made a note to download a Zac Brown Band album (and delete it before I accidentally listened to it).

Dave Matthews Band performed a song backed up by a choir, horns and a string section. It’s bad enough that Mr. Matthews has a violin player in his band that doesn’t have anything to do 60% of the time; watching him stand there and wait until his time to come back in while there’s a string octet shredding away behind him just made a sad thing sadder.

Maxwell singing a duet with Roberta Flack is a fantastic idea on paper, but without the aid of a time machine it can backfire a little bit. I’m not saying Ms. Flack looked a little confused, but I’m definitely not saying she looked like she knew what was going on around her.

The fact that these days people are no longer talking about whether or not rock and roll is dead makes me assume it is. Jeff Beck’s tribute to the great Les Paul helped to confirm my suspicions. Two words, middle-aged whites: buggy whips.

The Li’l Wayne/Eminem/Drake performance was neutered beyond repair by five second chunks of silence every time the CBS censors thought someone was about to say a cuss word. I thought the TV was just screwing up the first couple of times. I found this almost unbearably lame. When will rappers learn they don’t have to swear to be popular?

And then, surprising everybody who wasn’t expecting it to happen, Taylor Swift won Album of the Year. If I weren’t so dead inside I might make a Kanye West joke, but I lost two and a half hours of my life to the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, and I’m pretty dead inside.