LOS ANGELES – I have covered the Grammy Awards for the Associated Press for 15 years. But this strange year feels like the first time.
Built around performances, full of singing and shouting, and with the biggest crowd of any awards show, the Grammys seem uniquely wrong for a world still in the coronavirus pandemic.
But organizers are taking extraordinary measures to pull it off, and the AP was one of just a few media outlets invited inside during the preparations, so long as our reporters took constant COVID-19 tests and observe many other restrictions at the hyper-cautious scene.
For nearly all of my years as an AP video journalist doing interviews on the party-like red carpet at the Grammys, they have been held at Staples Center, a