Country Stars Grammy Memories

This year’s Grammy Awards Show will make memories for all who win and attend.  But we asked some country stars to give their favorite Grammy memory.

Taylor Swift won a couple of Grammy Awards last year, both for her #1 hit “Mean.” She talked about it with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton: “The song Mean was written in a vulnerable moment of despair and defeat, feeling like I had no one else to turn to except write this song, and to have this song win two Grammys, it just was such an amazing feeling.  I was so happy, and later performed the song on the show, we got a standing ovation, and that visual was hands-down one of the visuals I’ll never forget in my whole life.  Feeling that finally-triumphant feeling standing with my band-mates, seeing the crowd clapping for us, it was so wonderful, I’m wonderful to have that moment to look back on anytime I have a bad day.”

Two years ago, Lady Antebellum dominated the Grammy Awards, winning a total of five, including Record Of The Year for “Need You Now.”  Dave Heywood told Lon he was most surprised by that one:  “We  had won four by then, we were clocked out, we weren’t gonna win any more, and my mother had checked out, gone to bed, and that’s the way we felt too.” Charles Kelley added: “You can see the look on our faces too, it almost felt like too much, we don’t deserve this.”  That night, Hillary Scott met Lady Gaga, who shook her hand and said, “Two Ladies.” 

Carrie Underwood told Lon her favorite memory came when she performed in the Grammy Tribute to Michael Jackson in 2010: “The coolest part for me was being in rehearsal with Celine Dion, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, and everyone walked in with no egos, everybody was there for a common purpose, which to do the best job we could to honor somebody in a way that the people around him wanted him to be honored.  I had never met Michael, but the people that had, to see how emotional they got and to see how important this was to them made me want to do my best, and made me even more honored to be part of it.”

In 2009, Keith Urban was part of two tributes. The first was for Bo Diddley.  But the second came at the last minute, when Rihanna and Chris Brown dropped out. A few weeks later, he described the situation to Lon: “It was literally less than an hour before the show that they put this together.  I was actually walking in the hallway of Staples Center, heading to the hotel to get ready for the show, and the producer grabs me by my arm and is dragging me into Justin Timberlake’s dressing room, and we were trying to get Al Green on the phone and wake him up, and this whole thing is being thrown together in seconds, and I’ve got the song on my iPod, because I know it but I’ve never really played it.  And we rehearsed it once, and it was basically on, so it was pretty happening.”

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