One of the most memorable moments of Sunday’s Grammy Awards was when Cher, who was supposed to announce the record of the year award, walked offstage before doing so and had to be called back by host Trevor Noah — only to then mistakenly announce the winner of the award as “Luther Vandross,” rather than Kendrick Lamar‘s “luther.” But the show’s executive producer says Cher was totally fine with her mistakes.
Speaking on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, executive producer Ben Winston says Cher was told exactly what she was supposed to do ahead of time. “I promise you, we had briefed her, and I promise you, what she had to do was in the prompter,” he says. But Winston says he liked that she didn’t do what was expected.
“If I could go back in time, I’d want that to happen again,” Winston says. “She’s happy with it. She had a great time. You want a bit of anarchy.”
But he probably didn’t like the anarchy that was caused when Lady Gaga almost canceled her performance of “Abracadabra” because she was on tour and didn’t have enough time to rehearse a big number. She flew in from Japan the day before the show and ended up doing a stripped-down rock reimagining of the track.
“If she’d been in LA, it would’ve been 100 dancers and this big thing,” Winston says. “There was one point a few weeks before the show that we thought we might have to lose her from the show, ’cause she just was like, ‘I just don’t see how I can.’ So it was amazing that not only did she do it, but I think she brought one of the most iconic performances.”
“It was so different, so original, so spectacular,” he adds.
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