Following Monday night’s Grammys, the family of the late singer Natalie Cole expressed their disappointment in the way the Grammys chose to honor her. One of Cole’s greatest achievements during her lifetime was being the first black musician to win “Best New Artist” and won a total of nine Grammys and they felt like the awards snubbed her after death.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Cole’s two sisters Timolin and Casey said, “Words cannot express the outrage and utter disappointment at the disrespectful tribute, or lack thereof, to a legendary artist such as our sister.”
Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich has since spoken out about the tribute. In an interview with Billboard, Ehrlich stated, he did run the idea passed the family and they all approved adding, “Frankly, I think it was appropriate.”
More below.
Ehrlich continued standing by the tribute;
“…at one point I was playing around with ‘Miss You Like Crazy,’ because I love that song, But when I looked again at the Grammy show we did where she won for ‘Unforgettable,’ and I saw the last 45 seconds of that number, where her father throws her a kiss, she throws him a kiss, and then she turns to the audience and throws everybody a kiss — that just was so touching and so emotional to me that that felt like it had to be the end of the whole ‘In Memoriam’ segment. I hadn’t looked at that clip in several years, but when I saw it again, I knew it was right.”
Ehrlich’s colleague and the telecast’s co-writer David Wild, backed up the producer saying that particular clip is extremely special because of Ehrlich’s connection to Cole. “That clip really impacted him, and he thought, he’s not gonna do better at Natalie than Natalie,” he explained. “When he found that clip and showed it to me, he was sort of in tears, because it meant so much to him.”
Check out the tribute below. Skip to 4:36 for just Natalie Cole’s part.
Thoughts?
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