Paul Simon” tonight on CBS (or, in days to come, streaming on Paramount+). But if you have only about a 10-minute stretch to spare for televised non-holiday music in the days leading up to Christmas, maybe make it the closing act of this special — especially the generational handoff number that has one master, Rhiannon Giddens, movingly joining another. As Giddens and Simon perform “American Tune,” you may feel like you’ve gone off to find America, and actually kinda succeeded in that search, over the course of just one number.
Everything else about the telecast — which was filmed before a live audience at Hollywood’s Pantages back in April (see Variety‘s next-day coverage here) — feels immaculately chosen by producer Ken Ehrlich, if hardly marked by left-field surprises. There are no sops to the youth vote, except for the inclusion of the Jonas Brothers reviving “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” which, with all due respect to their respect for one of the greats, probably clocks in as the least essential performance here. But it’s fine that they didn’t bring in, like, Gayle for the occasion. With a Paul Simon, you pretty much want something closer to a peer-on-peer review panel, which you’re definitely getting when one of the guests of honor is Stevie Wonder, the only guy who won more album of the year Grammys in the 1970s (three) than the pair of album trophies Simon picked up during that same decade. None of the other guests quite count as actual ’60s-era contemporaries the way Wonder does, but with other frequent awardees like Bonnie Raitt also on board, it feels like Old Home Week when it comes to this “Salute” almost secondarily serving as a tribute to the Grammys themselves.
