NPR

Billie Eilish Sweeps Grammys In Ceremony Clouded By Controversy And Mourning

In a night when Eilish, the youngest artist to win Album and Record of the year, might have otherwise been the whole story, the Recording Academy could not quite put its recent scandals behind it.
Billie Eilish, who swept the four major categories at the 2020 Grammy Awards, accepts her trophy for Song of the Year, for "Bad Guy."

By the end of the 62nd Grammy Awards on Sunday evening, a major star had been crowned: 18-year-old singer Billie Eilish, who swept all four of the night's biggest prizes — Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Album of the Year — along with honors for Best Pop Vocal Album.

But that rush of awards came only at the tail end of a long, strange and emotionally ambivalent ceremony held Sunday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The evening was far from the fizzy, uplifting celebration that the music industry, and the Recording Academy, the organization that gives out the prizes, had anticipated just a few weeks ago. But the organizers of the ceremony seemed to still

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