OUR WRITERS’ TAKE

Why Winehouse

Amy Winehouse’s performance was an illustration of an overhyped artist failing to deliver the goods. Several other young female singers with a torch/R&B; background could sing rings around her. But her successive wins tonight were more for one song, “Rehab,” and not necessarily the whole album and another example of America’s fascination with train wrecks and the public humiliation of a celebrity.

-- Casey Dolan

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He was a boot-in

How could Vince Gill not win country album for his four-CD set “These Days”? Working with dozens of duet partners, including Grammy faves Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs and about 100 musicians in all, there wasn’t anyone in Nashville who didn’t either appear on the album or is related to someone who did.

-- Randy Lewis

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And the winner isn’t . . .

Herbie Hancock’s “River: The Joni Letters” was truly one of last year’s best. But his left-field win for album of the year makes us wonder: Did the voters for Amy and Kanye cancel each other?

-- Ann Powers

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Night and day

One of the oddest juxtapositions of the evening might have come following Amy Winehouse’s performance, when Tony Bennett and Natalie Cole announced Doris Day’s receipt of a lifetime achievement Grammy -- a prize intended for an artist who had never received a trophy in a competitive race at the ceremony. Day’s sunny persona seems in stark contrast to Winehouse’s hard-living reputation, but then again, the woman whose most famous recording is “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)” probably isn’t the type to judge.

-- Gina McIntyre