Grammy Awards Get Creative in Delivering Outdoor Ceremony with Shure Microphones

Shure Axient Digital, Super 55, KSM8 and SM58 prominent throughout the CBS broadcast from outside Los Angeles Convention Center.

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Broadcast live outside the Los Angeles Convention Center, the 63rd GRAMMY Awards offered viewers a night to celebrate music with performances from top artists across different musical genres.

The audience-free show combined a mix of performances with the outdoor ceremony for select artists who were on-hand to accept the awards. The majority of the show’s 23 musical productions, as well as the ceremony, relied on Shure’s Axient digital wireless system and microphones.

Throughout the ceremony, host Trevor Noah used an Axient Digital SM58 handheld microphone set to frequency diversity mode.

The evening’s big winners featured a long list of star-studded women including Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Megan Thee Stallion.

Dua Lipa, who won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album, sported a blinged-out pink Axient Digital KSM9 handheld microphone and was joined on stage by DaBaby, who used a nickel Axient Digital KSM8 handheld microphone for “Levitating.”

Related: Grammy Awards Technicians Talk Shop on AV Used at the Show

Later Mickey Guyton, who already made history as the first Black woman nominated as a solo country artist, sang “Black Like Me” with an Axient Digital KSM9 handheld microphone.

One of the hottest performances of the night was by Best New Artist Megan Thee Stallion, who used an Axient Digital SM58 handheld microphone for her rendition of “Body” and the Grammy-winning “Savage.”

Stallion was later joined on stage by Cardi B, who donned a Shure TwinPlex headset microphone paired with the Axient Digital micro bodypack transmitter.

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As always, the broadcast paid tribute to the people lost last year. The “In Memoriam” included four performances with Bruno Mars (Super 55) and Anderson Paak celebrating Little Richard, Lionel Richie (SM58) honoring Kenny Rogers, Chris Martin (SM58) and Brittany Howard (SM58) recognizing Gerry Marsden and Brandi Carlile paying tribute to John Prine, one of the artists lost in 2020 to the coronavirus.

At Grammys.com, visitors can see the names of nearly 1,000 people in the music industry, including Shure VP of corporate and government relations Mark Brunner, who died last year.

The Academy this year recognized several of the country’s independent music venues who have been greatly impacted by the pandemic this past year during the Grammys broadcast. Employees from the iconic New York’s Apollo Theater, Nashville’s Station Inn, and the Troubadour and the Hotel Café (both in Los Angeles) were on hand to present awards throughout the night.

The new format enabled musical acts to bring their songs to life. Lil Baby delivered a rendition of “The Bigger Picture,” where he used Beta 58A.

As always, Shure product specialists were available throughout the Grammy Awards broadcast to ensure all artist needs were accommodated.

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