Grammy in the comfort zone

When it comes to Grammy prognosticating, the easiest game to play is never who will win and who should win. It's who should have been nominated.

The Grammys may pretend to be a meritocracy, but "music's biggest night" - at 8 tonight on CBS3, live from Los Angeles, with performances by such multiple nominees as the Dixie Chicks, Mary J. Blige, Justin Timberlake and Shakira, plus a long-awaited reunion of the Police - is, first and foremost, a television show.

And it's a three-hour-plus prime-time advertisement for a music industry that needs to showcase stars capable of doing business in an uncertain, download-and-ringtone-driven future. So though critics and bloggers spent 2006 praising the likes of Cat Power, the Hold Steady and Clipse, none of these acts came close to achieving the mix of respectability and mainstream penetration that makes Grammy go gaga. ...