Best vocal performance?

The Grammy awards went about as expected.

Beyonce won a bunch of awards.

Taylor Swift won for Fearless.

Lady Gaga wore a bunch of weird outfits.

Lil Wayne acted a fool.

I must stay I've never understood the Grammys. It's been said the Grammys recognize excellence in the recording industry and the awards have nothing to do with album sales, video requests, downloads and so forth.

However, if that's true. How does Taylor Swift win best country female vocal performance for "White Horse?" Vocal performance ... that means singing and oh, I don't know, the ability to sing on pitch?

I guess that's the greatness of the Grammy in that the engineers and production value of the recording is rewarded.

Seriously, did everyone hear Swift perform at the Grammys with Stevie Nicks? C'mon. The key of J sharp was definitely prominent in that performance.

In fact, I would dare say it was the worst performance in Grammy history. There was an interesting hypothetical posed on a morning radio show this week -- if Taylor Swift appeared before American Idol judges, would she advance through the first round or would she be sent home?

Not that American Idol is the be all end all of the music industry ... far from it. These are the people who brought us Fantasia Barrino, Ruben Studdard and Taylor Hicks.

Still, according to the Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences, Taylor Swift is a better singer than Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, LeeAnn Womack or Martina McBride. Really?

Those engineers and producers on Fearless deserve all of the awards they can muster if they can make that sound good. Anyone familiar with Taylor's song "You Belong with Me" knows that the arrangement was altered for the performance at the Grammys. I believe the arrangement was changed to keep Taylor from switching back and forth between vocal registers -- full voice versus falsetto.

I will give her this -- she writes her own stuff. Taylor Swift wrote and/or co-wrote every song on that Fearless album. Carrie Underwood hasn't written a song in her life that I know of. What does she stand for. We're supposed to believe Carrie Underwood is prone to go on a drunk binger in Vegas and end up marrying some dude where she doesn't even know her last name?

Really ... the Jesus Take the Wheel girl? Oh, right ... and before that, she was smashing up someone's pretty little souped up four-wheel drive and carving her name into the leather seats?

Taylor Swift may be exactly what has been the standard bearer for the music industry as a whole. When it comes down to it, the singer/songwriter always wins out. Carole King, James Taylor, John Mayer, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan ... none of these folks have the greatest singing voices in the world. But all of them have enjoyed tremendous careers.

It was good to see fellow Texan Miranda Lambert nominated for a couple of Grammys. I'm not an industry expert, but I believe "Revolution" is the album that will define her career. In a few years, we will all look back at "Revolution" and say that is where it all started for her ... even though she's put out two other albums before this one.

Hopefully, the Real. Texas. Festival. will be able to have Miranda headline one of the nights. She is greatness.

Speaking of Texans, there were another couple of Texans nominated and one group actually won.

Jay Perez (RTF alumni) and Los Texmaniacs were nominated in the best Tejano album category. Los Texmaniacs won.

Good for them and good for Texas.