If you didn't see singer-songwriter Sam Smith's performance with biological male Kim Petras on the 65th annual GRAMMY Awards Sunday night, you're one of the lucky ones.
Smith and Petras performed their song "Unholy," and the performance lived up to its name: bathed in red light, Smith donned a hat with devil horns while Petras was trapped in a cage. Did Smith (editor's note: Smith announced a pronoun change to "they/them" in 2019, but rules of grammar still apply at Townhall) get the production design idea from Joe Biden's angry "unity" speech at Independence Hall?
Sam Smith's satanic rendition of Joe Biden's Pennsylvania speech is all the talk this morning. #GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/4ce6iBmDWA
— ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) February 6, 2023
But even before performing, Smith tweeted a photo of a rehearsal with "This is going to be SPECIAL" followed up with a tongue emoji because...of course. Pretty normal considering the source:
This is going to be SPECIAL 👅 #GRAMMYs @RecordingAcad @kimpetras pic.twitter.com/oIA0dhP8bm
— SAM SMITH (@samsmith) February 5, 2023
But then the official CBS account replied to Smith saying the network was "ready to worship!" Seriously, what in the *literal* Hell was this?
....you can say that again. We are ready to worship!
— CBS (@CBS) February 5, 2023
Worship, huh? That preview, given the performance that followed with Smith wearing a hat with devil horns and Petras locked in a cage, raised questions about what or whom, exactly, the most-watched TV network in America (2021) was ready to "worship" on Sunday night.
— U.S. Ministry of Truth (@USMiniTru) February 6, 2023
CBS just openly excited about devil worship... nothing to see here https://t.co/KUciI7gn2Y
— Alec Sears (@alec_sears) February 6, 2023
Sure, the performance got a rise out of what most would consider sensible people, but it's nothing new. In fact, as Dana Loesch pointed out, it's more lazy than distasteful for performers to try being provocative and edgy...by doing what has already been done. As Townhall reported back in 2021, Lil Nas X already did the whole "trip to hell to visit Satan" bit. In order to be "brave" or considered "counter-culture," one has to do something that is actually counter to the current culture.
I'm so tired of the broke, cliched "offend the Christians" shtick. It's the last refuge for talentless hacks propped up by increasingly irrelevant labels as avatars for overly produced pop diarrhea.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 6, 2023
Unsurprisingly, the Recording Academy honored Smith and Petras for "Unholy" and then gleefully signaled their virtue for making "history."
History made. 👏#GRAMMYs
— CBS (@CBS) February 6, 2023
Congratulations to @kimpetras and @samsmith on their Grammy win! pic.twitter.com/jIBiRtTsi6
But, as Ben Shapiro and others noted, the GRAMMYs this year showed more than mere virtue signaling:
But there’s something deeper happening here, too. The elite in our society are fully in line with the ideology of Satanic fealty expressed by Smith and Petras.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 6, 2023
There's some bias in this opinion, but the evening would have been much better if GRAMMYs producers had simply invited Shania Twain and Luke Combs to perform for the entire three-plus hour broadcast.