The music luminaries that partied at Los Angeles’s Staples Center at Sunday night’s Grammys moved the festivities across the street Tuesday to the Nokia Theater, to honor 25-time Grammy-winner Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder: Songs In the Key of Life — An All-Star Grammy Salute featured such illustrious talent as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams, John Legend, and Tony Bennett, but in the end, none of these stars were able to outshine Wonder himself.
"If you make music in any way, you learned something from Stevie Wonder," host LL Cool J told the celebrity-packed audience. "Thank God for Stevie Wonder."
Among the show’s highlights were an unbilled Beyoncé making a surprise appearance alongside Ed Sheeran and guitar great Gary Clark Jr. for a fiery "Fingertips Pt. 2"/“Master Blaster”/”Higher Ground” medley; Sheeran returning for a vibey, loop-pedal-assisted solo take on “I Was Made to Love Her”; and dynamite divas Jill Scott, Janelle Monae, and India.Arie forming a modern-day girl group (with an introduction from the Supremes’ Mary Wilson!) to sing “As.”
But the best all-star performance came from a fiercely funky Lady Gaga, who banged out “I Wish” at her electric piano with complete abandon and gushed to Wonder, who was sitting in the front row: “Stevie, you were a part of my life at such a young age… Your album was my first CD that I put myself in at age 6 in the CD player. It blew my mind. I think about this song and I think about my childhood and that moment, and I wish I could go back just one more time.”
