Bruno Mars celebrated Little Richard, Lionel Richie honored Kenny Rogers and Brandi Carlile paid tribute to John Prine during an in memoriam segment on the Grammy Awards that featured an especially long list of names after a year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mars, joined by Anderson Paak blazed through Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly.” Richie sang “Lady,” the ballad he wrote and Rogers made a hit adding, “I miss you Kenny” as he ended.
And Carlile sang “I Remember Everything” for Prine, one of the artists lost in 2020 to the coronavirus, along with Charley Pride, K.T. Oslin, Adam Schlesiner, Trini Lopez and many others.
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The performances were interspersed between montages of the names and faces of the dead.
Host Trevor Noah introduced the segment by telling viewers they can see the names of nearly 1,000 people in the music industry who died last year at Grammys.com.
Brittany Howard, backed up by Chris Martin on piano, ended the tribute with a stirring version of the Broadway standard “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
