Her awards were for,
Best song of the year Single Ladies (put a ring on it)
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for Halo
Best R&B contemporary album for I Am … Sasha Fierce
Best R&B female vocal for Single Ladies
Best traditional R&B performance for At Last
Best Song Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).

Other big winners of the night were Taylor Swift who won Best Album of the year which was among her four awards, Lady Gaga who rightly won best Electronic/Dance album and Poker Face best dance recording. On the night Lady Gaga opened the show with an amazing performance with Elton John on Speechless and Your Song.

Great to see a band like Kings Of Leon receiving three awards, among them best rock song for Use Somobody and they admitted being a little drunk when picking up their awards.

And as expected the late Michael Jackson picked up the lifetime achievement award.

Check out the Official Grammy Site here where you can see some of the night’s performances.

Boy George

The first gender-bender pop star to receive mainstream acceptance was Boy George in the early 80´s with his band Culture Club. Their first appearance on TV singing Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? produced cries of “is it a man or a woman?” and it turned George into a celebrity overnight.

George was everywhere even appearing in the American TV series The A –Team

Hanging onto George’s dreadlocks were his friend Marilyn, a one-hit-wonder with Calling your Name and the more successful Pete Burns with Dead or Alive.

Prince was also cross dressing – have you seen the cover to his Dirty Mind album? (Borat comes to mind!)

Annie Lennox

Not to be left out we also had women pop stars such as Annie Lennox who, for the Eurythmics single Sweet Dreams, donned a man’s suit with orange cropped hair (a nod to Bowie´s Ziggy?).

Grace Jones also created a striking image on her album Night Clubbing. Do you remember her bitch-slapping Russell Harty on his BBC chat show?

Grace Jones

In the 90´s Ru Paul emerged with his single Super Model (You Better Work) and had his biggest hit with Elton John on the remake of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

Canadian lesbian singer Kd Lang released her album Drag wearing a pin striped suite looking extremely masculine, and Marilyn Manson’s most successful album Mechanical Animals had a controversial sleeve in which his gender could not be determined.

Marilyn Manson

Towards the end of the 90´s we saw Antony and the Johnsons with singer Anthony Hegarty who again merged his image into an androgynous alien being and in 1998 you even had a drag Eurovision winner with Dana International, far too camp!

In the seventies & eighties gender benders shocked the public, whereas since then they have became mainstream and acceptable. So what about today’s pop stars? Why aren’t there any famous gender-benders out there?

Possibly, because being gay has become so much more acceptable in the 2000´s that the need to dress outrageously has lost its impact – which was needed in the seventies and eighties as being gay was still a big taboo.

I for one miss them, they were exciting fresh and not sanitized like many of today’s pop stars.

There were no videos, no MTV and you had to use your own imagination when listening to songs. You had 12 inches of tremendous art work and you didn’t need a magnifying glass to read the credits. You had at tops 10-12 songs on an album so there were no poor tracks (listen to any Bowie album from the 70´s). And to this day I still say vinyl sounds better (warmer) than a CD.

Glam Rock is an English phenomenon all about tribal, rhythmic beats with songs which lasted around three minutes. For me it was euphoric Rock N Roll. It was also about personal style – flamboyant glitter, silver jump suites, platform boots (the higher the better) and men in make-up.

The fashion filtered down to the high-street as brightly colored trousers with high waistbands (the more buttons the cooler you looked) wide bell-bottoms, jumpers with three stars on them, shirts with massive collars, tight t-shirts and of course platform shoes.

I first became aware of Glam Rock through my brother (sharing a bedroom) as he had the poster from the T.Rex album Electric Warrior pined to the wall. I remember thinking how special and exciting Marc Bolan looked with guitar in hands standing in front of a large amplifier with an electric glow around him. I was 10 years old and a wanna-be glam rocker.

The birth of Glam Rock in 1970, saw Marc Bolan and T Rex (formally the acoustic hippy duo Tyrannosaurus Rex) with their first hit single Ride A White Swan, a UK chart number 2. Marc was the first man to appear with glitter on his cheeks on Top Of The Pops.

¨Get It On , Bang A Gong ¨ – T Rex
The official start of Glam Rock was 1971 when, T Rex had three hit singles, along with Slade. And the Sweet first appeared on the scene (awful A-Sides brilliant self penned B-Sides). I remember at school you were either a Sweet fan or a Slade fan – never both!! And if you were a Sweet fan you were called a poof!

¨All The Young Dudes¨ – Mott the Hoople
1972 was a dark year with the miner’s strikes and power cuts, but that didn´t seem to matter to teenagers as 1972 was a golden year for the ever colourful Glam Rock – especially as we rented our first colour TV around this time.

Unforgettable moments include David Bowie’s appearance on TOTP when he put his arm suggestively around platinum blonde Mick Ronson and blew the mind of lonely young gay men across the UK.

And those of a certain age will never forget Alice Cooper’s “Schools Out”, the massive summer anthem released in time for the school holidays. Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” was another defining moment in many young music lovers lives – how did this song get past Mary Whitehouse and the BBC Governors?

Other Glam Anthems must include Gary Glitter’s “Rock N Roll” (his only really credible song), Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain” and Mott The Hoople with the Bowie penned ¨All The Young Dudes¨- they have just finished a series of reunion shows to celebrate 40 years since they first formed.

¨You Better Beware¨ – the Sweet
At the start of 1973 the Sweet gave us “Blockbuster” the first of their superior glam singles .They were written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman – the 70´s equivalent of Stock Aitkin and Waterman. This talented duo also wrote for Mud, Smokie, The Arrows, Racey and many more.

Also in 1973 the leather-clad Suzi Quatro emerged with another Chin/Chapman song “Can The Can”, the first of a string of hits for her and the first female rocker to appear on British TV.

There were also fake-glam artists hanging on the coat-tails of our heroes – like Alvin Stardust, Elton John, Zappo, Barry Blue, Kenny and Chicory Tip.

Glam rock was about to reach it’s pinnacle in 1974 – but I will save that (and a sad ending) for my next post.