The 54th Annual Grammy Awards were last night at the Staples Center in LA, and as usual music's biggest and brightest stars from the past year were out in force.

The red carpet was pretty tame with the exception of Nicki Minaj showing up in some Little Red Riding Hood frock. Oh, and she opted for a pope instead of a clutch, dubbed by many as this year's "egg moment." Her semi-sacreligious performance was decent, but it was a little tired after GaGa's "Alejandro" and "Judas" videos. I'll admit I am still highly anticipating Minaj's new album, Pink Friday Roman Reloaded.

The only other red carpet happening that is worth mentioning is when Taylor Swift found out she was a pre-show winner and Ryan Seacrest asked her about it. "I'm so excited," she said, squinty eyes widened as much as possible and mouth gaping open. She's always "so excited." I could make a video montage of her reactions and it would look like a still image.

P.S. - It was a pre-show award. You'd probably be "so excited" if you won a game of bingo.

Bruce Springsteen opened the show, which plenty of people seemed excited about. But my generation speaks through me when I say I wasn't terribly interested in it.

LL Cool J was a decent host. His small opening prayer for Whitney Houston was overshadowed by the awkward number of times he had reassure everyone that the prayer was his idea and his alone and that it was how he personally felt about the situation and on one should feel pressure to pray about everything. Now I remember why I unfollowed him, or whichever assistant is in charge of the account, on Twitter: endless retweets of inspriational quotes and people saying hi flooding my feed.

Once the nominations went out it was easy to see that Adele would win every award she was nominated for. Not that the other artists weren't as deserving as her, but it was blatantly her year. So once she won the first award, all I saw was:

On the mend from vocal chord surgery, her's was easily the most anticipated performance of the night, and she BROUGHT it. Her weepy speech for album of the year was semi-comprehensible, but when she started babbling in her British drawl all I saw was Audrey Hepburn as pre-Higgins Eliza Dolittle, and loved every second of it.

I'm really not sure why they allowed Chris Brown a performance, let alone two of them in a single night. The first one began with his raw voice blaring, which I knew wouldn't last long. Once again his set focused on his footwork rather than his voice. It's the Grammys, Chris, you don't bring a dance to a sing fight.

Then they had the gall to give him an actual award. You can nominate him all you want, but it will always be in bad taste to actually award him for anything he does from here out. He still get's testy when you speak about his domestic disturbance with Rihanna, (see Robyn Roberts GMA interview that ended with a chair going through a window) and he thinks that the present and future can completely mask the past. It can't.

Taylor Swift was already mentioned in this post once. If you want to read a review of her performance go elsewhere. The second she came on I left to go tweeze my eyebrows.

Once they announced Katy Perry as the next performer I prayed to everything sacred in the music industry for her to lip sync. Michael's sequined glove and Armstrong's trumpet came through for me, while Bjork's swan dress sulked a the corner.

She performed a new single, which was decent, nothing terribly deviant from her previous singles, but her blue crimped weave was messed.

Tony Bennett and Carrie Underwood did a lovely rendition of "It Had To Be You," but all I saw and heard was Marla Hooch.

The somber note of the evening was Jennifer Hudson's tribute to the late and great Whitney Houston. The tribute fell a little short for my liking, especially for someone who was once so well known. Granted they only had 24 hours to put it together, but Hudson could have sang more than one song, or a video montage of her hits could have easily been done. I guess I'll have to hope that "The Bodyguard" was brilliant enough that she'll get the tribute she deserves at The Academy Awards in a couple weeks.

No matter what the autopsy reports say, I'll know deep down that it was the crushing reality that she was foolish enough to marry Bobby Brown that got her in the end. She was preceded in death by her voice, which died some time ago after extensive abuse and neglect. I hope they have adjacent burial plots.

RIP

For a complete list of winners from last night's Grammy Awards, check out http://blog.music.aol.com/2012/02/12/grammy-2012-winners/