Ranking The Performances At The 2026 Grammys

Is there any such thing as a great Grammys telecast? One where you're just completely locked in through the whole thing, like "let's all celebrate music together"? No, right? The worst Grammys telecast is a never-ending parade of self-congratulatory bullshit and boring balladry. The best Grammys telecast is a surprisingly OK experience.

In recent years, the Grammys telecast has started to become a reliably OK experience, which is a bit disorienting. The Recording Academy has made a concerted effort to get rid of the stink of past corrupt boomer leadership, and a new generational canon has emerged. The show will still make room for multiple Bruno Mars performances and accept any excuse to heap awards on Billie Eilish. John Legend will invariably pop up at some point. Emotive ballads will be belted. But the show itself isn't as militantly, defiantly, intentionally out of touch as it once was. That's a good thing.

The 2025 Grammys had a surprising number of good performances. Last night's big broadcast didn't quite hit on that level. Lots of the big winners — Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Billie Eilish — didn't perform. Lots of other big names didn't show up. There were so many tributes. The Best New Artist nominees all got compressed little two-minute windows to make an impression. Still, two minutes is something. Exciting younger performers were granted big and messy showcase moments. Only a few of the performances were absolute bullshit. For the most part, it was fine. After moving in the right direction, the show is mostly staying there, and the lack of significant backslide is its own kind of victory.

The big newsmakers in last night's show weren't the performances. They were the winners, the victory speeches, the occasional moments of genuine surprise and rupture. My favorite performance of the night came from Cher, who seemed to forget where she was before happily chirping that Record Of The Year was going to Luther Vandross, a man who has been dead for more than two decades. That was fun! Sadly, it was not, strictly speaking, a musical performance, so it won't be on this list.

Instead, let's do what we do every year and go through all of the night's actual musical performances, from worst to first.

19. Trevor Noah singing that Bad Bunny song with the marching band

Bad Bunny didn't perform on the Grammys because he's doing the Super Bowl Halftime Show next week. The show's producers were lucky that he showed up to accept the big award and do bits with the retiring host for the whole night. Naturally, Noah made a big thing out of attempting to goad Benito into a performance. It was hard to watch. In his role as semi-permanent Grammys host, Noah has just been kissing celebrity ass for years upon years. I cannot wait to see literally anyone else host this stupid show.

18. Alex Warren

Hey, what if Benson Boone couldn’t backflip and didn’t seem to have any energy and also couldn’t hit any notes live? Nevermind. Forget I asked. This guy was quick to blame his rhythmic difficulties on malfunctioning in-ear monitors, but it's not like he would've been any good even if that shit was working right. Next time, save the floating platform for someone who will do something with it. Jelly Roll and his wife stole this performance just via the reaction shot where they were about to shove their tongues down each other’s throats.

17. Leon Thomas

Hey, look at that! We're already out of outright shitheap territory and into the realm of comfortable Grammy mediocrity. Leon Thomas is a dog, he's a mutt, and his performance was pretty much exactly what I expected, except that Thomas also got to show that he knows how to play a guitar solo, which is nice. The bass player looked like he was really into it. I was happy for that guy.

16. Reba McEntire with Brandy Clark and Lukas Nelson

We get a performance like this every year, and it’s really just a utilitarian thing. Someone has to sing a song during the first part of the in memoriam montage. This was a perfectly pleasant and understated version of that. It was nice. My big take here is: Get the music executives out of this montage. Musicians only. That's just how I feel.

15. Bruno Mars and Rosé

What were they going for with this opening? It started out with Bruno Mars doing his version of Hendrixian shredding, and then it turned into a slightly messy headlong rock version of “APT.,” with strobes and people jumping around and the camera randomly switching to black-and-white very so often. “APT.” isn’t really the type of song that demands this kind of reading, but it’s an extremely fun song, and the performance was cute enough, I guess. This sort of slightly inexplicable professionalism is the Bruno Mars Thing, and he remains perfectly fine at doing that thing, so this was perfectly fine. Rosé is a gifted performer, but she once again felt like a guest on her own song.

14. Post Malone with Slash, Duff McKagan, Andrew Watt, & Chad Smith

On the one hand: Really? Post Malone for the Ozzy Osbourne tribute? He did fine, but also he was Post Malone, doing the Ozzy Osbourne tribute. If you can get two Guns N' Roses guys, you can presumably get the whole band, so why not just do that? On the other hand: “War Pigs,” baby! If you want to put Slash playing the “War Pigs” solo on my TV, I’m not going to yell at you about it. Also, they didn't just have Yungblud do another one of these Ozzy tributes, so that's something.

13. Olivia Dean

This lady was obviously going to win Best New Artist before they even announced the nominees. Once I saw her performance, I understood her push a little better. It seems pretty clear that the Grammys and various associated forces would like to run the Amy Winehouse thing back, except this time without any obvious personal problems. None of that is very interesting, but it’s also not Olivia Dean’s fault. She gave a cute performance of a cute song, and my daughter said she looks like a Lego Friends character. I’m not fully clear on what that means, but it made me laugh.

12. The Marías

Pretty lady sings ghost lullaby, and Sprockets-looking guy plays underwater guitar solo. I am not mad!

11. Lola Young

Once again, I think I get what they're going for here. What if someone sang a staid Grammy-style piano ballad — in this case, a very different version of the breakout hit "Messy"— but seemed to have something personally at stake, and also seemed like she might melt down right in front of you. I didn’t really care about the song, but this was compelling television. She has presence! I liked it better when she beat four much more famous people to win Best Pop Solo Performance and visibly couldn't believe it, but the performance itself was fine, too.

10. Tyler, The Creator with Regina Hall

We are now in the "interesting trainwreck" portion of this list. I was a couple of drinks in by the time Tyler's performance happened, so I’m not quite convinced that I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. Tyler ran over and killed his confusing-ass Chromakopia persona? And he sprayed himself with gasoline like Zoolander’s roommates? And he had both an Oscar winner and an onstage explosion as part of his generally incomprehensible stage presentation? Tyler is an electric performer with a clear weakness for self-referential frippery. He didn't need to do all that. This would've been a lot better if he didn't do all that.

9. Sabrina Carpenter

Tyler, The Creator and Sabrina Carpenter are vastly different pop stars, but both of them brought the elaborate, chaotic too-muchness. There's plenty to like about Carpenter's performance. "Manchild": Great song! She was clearly singing live, and she can do that. The old-timey baggage-carousel set was cute and expensive-looking, and it allowed for some light OK Go-style treadmill action. But why were all the backup-dancer dudes dressed as examples of different professions, like in a Richard Scarry book? Maybe the astronaut and the surgeon and the magician who I first mistook for an Abraham Lincoln impersonator were just different examples, like “all these guys could be manchildren"? She also had a real live dove, for some reason. I guess you only get to play the Grammys once a year, so you might as well dump out all your ideas at once.

8. Addison Rae

Addison’s buddy Charli XCX did “performing in the parking garage under the arena” bit last year, but she didn’t stage a whole musical number the way that Addison did. This was some absolutely elite hair-flipping.

7. Sombr

I was not expecting this guy to be near the top of the Best New Artist pack. I’m still not sure I get Sombr’s whole deal, but this performance was all sparkles and sharp angles and extremely confident shoulder-shimmies. As a tall gawky and white guy, I am perhaps unduly impressed when I see another tall and gawky white guy projecting absolute swagger like that. In any case, I believe that pop stars should come across as alien Muppets, at least some of time time.

6. KATSEYE

Every televised KATSEYE performance, up to and including their Gap commercial, is just an excuse for some hyper-elaborate brain-melt choreography. Nobody wants or expects it to be anything other than that. This was exactly what it was supposed to be. “Gnarly” may or may not work as a piece of big-budget faux hyperpop, but it definitely works as an excuse for a Step Up sequel to break out on the Grammys stage.

5. Bruno Mars without Rosé

Two Bruno Mars performances in one night? That's the Grammys I know. In his first time on the stage last night, Mars' rockstar theatrics were more than a little forced. But his second time up was the man in his element, going full Vegas schmaltz — the lit-up Valentine’s Day stage, the red suits with the spread collars, the gold chains. When I see a whole band doing choreographed steps, my mood lifts just a little bit, and that's the whole idea. I have already had my first of what I'm sure will be many doctor's office waiting room encounters with "I Just Might," so the "new songs that sound like old songs" strategy is clearly still working.

4. Clipse with Pharrell and Voices Of Fire

At this particular moment in history, I don't have the mental space to really consider what the fuck is happening with the Clipse. Over the weekend, Pusha T's name appeared in the Epstein files. It was part of a crisis intake report, not anything verified. It could be a pure paranoid hallucination on somebody’s part. But it’s the kind of thing that can hang over a very good performance, which is what this was.

Look, let me have this one, OK? I have loved the Clipse for a very, very long time. I was at the damn Knitting Factory show. They could've done their heart-tugging John Legend song on this stage. That's what I was honestly expecting. Instead, the grand wizards of the almighty blizzard busted out a coke-rap deep cut with a fake snowstorm on the Grammys stage. Let me think about the implications another day.

3. Ms. Lauryn Hill with the Vanguard, Lucky Daye, Leon Thomas, Raphael Saadiq, Anthony Hamilton, Bilal, Jon Batiste, Alexia Jayy, October London, Lalah Hathaway, John Legend, Chaka Khan, & Wyclef Jean

Did I get everyone in there? I hope I got everyone in there. The D’Angelo tribute portion of the evening started off with Lauryn Hill singing her part of their duet “Nothing Really Matters.” During D’Angelo’s part, his vocals were piped into the arena, with the camera panning over to an empty piano stool. and the absence hit hard. I wish the salute could’ve kept going for an hour, but instead we got a messy, disjointed, inconsistent, lovely montage, and the highlight, Bilal absolutely crushing “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” was high.

As for the Roberta Flack tribute, I honestly did not think that Hill would bother with “Killing Me Softly,” since she has never been afraid to take the contrarian path. As she sang “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” I honestly forgot about the song that probably made Hill famous in the first place. Then Wyclef emerged from the crowd with a guitar and a sparkly cape for the partial Fugees reunion, and I realized that there was no other way it could’ve ended.

The full tribute here felt like an actual act of community rather than a regularly scheduled, ultra-rehearsed Grammy spectacle. Even perpetual Grammy-night irritant John Legend at least made sense here, since he got his start singing backup for Hill. I don’t have any jokes here. This was just a lovely and chaotic spectacle, a fitting end to a long in memoriam segment for a year when we lost way too many towering figures.

2. Lady Gaga

What do you want me to say here? She looked like a German expressionist charcoal drawing, she had choreographed camera movements, and she wore a hat that looked like the fatal flying guillotine. “Abracadabra,” the song that debuted in a Grammy ad last year, sounded great as operatic synth-rock. If any of these other fools want to have any hope of competing with her, they'd have to do something truly drastic, like stripping down to their undies.

1. Justin Bieber

What a fascinatingly bizarre move. This guy got up there in nothing but boxers, socks, and in-ear monitors. He had a full-length mirror onstage, presumably to make that stage look more like a bedroom. He had no band — just a Yamaha RGX guitar, some loop pedals, and an MPC that he used to trigger a sampled 2 Chainz ad-lib. Somehow, Justin Bieber evoked Ed Sheeran, Kanye West, and Frank Ocean, all at the same time and in a good way.

Bieber curled in on himself while singing about pulling up with the roof gone like Jimmy Neutron. He walked offstage and ran back out because he forgot to turn his sequencers off. He made the big, star-studded room feel hushed and intimate. This was the right kind of bonkers pop-star move. Bieber generally acts like someone who hates attention, and he put on the kind of show that was guaranteed to get the most attention. I thought he sounded great, too. One of the real issues with Grammy performances is that even the best ones seem to be sucking up to everyone in the room. This was not that. This was the other thing.