NARAS’s strategy for hipping up the Grammys has involved adding more and more categories each year, creating new subdivisions like Dance and Alternative, and hoping that voters knowledgeable in those areas will cast their votes responsibly. With more than a hundred categories in all, my print-out of this year’s nominations looked alarmingly like a congressional budget report. But it does seem to have worked. Britney Spears may have won the untelevised Best Dance Recording (for "Toxic") over the likes of Basement Jaxx, the Chemical Brothers, Kylie Minogue, and, best of all, Scissor Sisters (for their remarkable cover of Pink Floyd’s "Comfortably Numb"), but Basement Jaxx pulled through in Best Dance Album, where the absence of a pop star like Spears was significant. Of course, without a televised presentation, those awards are not likely to have much impact on sales or radio play. I’m not sure who won in the New Hawaiian Music category, but it’s good to know those slackers are finally getting their due.

Unfortunately, what looked good on paper didn’t pan out so well when it came to the broadcast. NARAS, not the voters, decides who’s going to perform and when. So if you were just a little late in getting to your television, you could have missed as many as five performers: Black Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani, Franz Ferdinand, Maroon 5, and Los Lonely Boys. That’s right: instead of giving each of those performers his or her opportunity to shine over the course of the night, Grammy opted to squeeze them all into a single segment — Grammy’s version of a mash-up? — that had one Black Eyed Pea doing some old-school breakdancing to the taut new-wave moves (not grooves) of Franz Ferdinand. It was a case of the producers trying to have their cake and eat it too — they could claim victory for presenting the hippest-hoppest opening segment in Grammy history while getting a bunch of lesser-known artists out of the way in a hurry. Not sure how a bona fide star like Stefani got roped into that plan, but when Grammy calls, artists tend to do as told.

That medley of sorts set the tone for a Grammy night that more or less reverted to its old conservative ways but did so with some imagination, teaming up artists from two or three generations for a series of tributes to everything from Southern rock and gospel to Janis Joplin and, of course, Ray Charles. I guess there’s safety in numbers, and I can’t think of a safer number than "Freebird." Gretchen Wilson, everyone’s favorite redneck woman (and I remember when redneck used to be an insult), joined Lynyrd Skynyrd and a couple of younger, buffer good ol’ boys (Keith Urban and Tim McGraw) for a red-state hootenanny that ended with "Sweet Home Alabama." Yes, we do remember that Nixon wasn’t their problem. But whose fault is George W.?

Except for a whole lot of overblown vocalizing by the kids (just compare the way a tasteful old pro like Mavis Staples delivers a line to the histrionics that affect every line that comes out of Alicia Keys’s mouth), the multigenerational tributes, modeled on the success of last year’s OutKast/George Clinton funk jam, kept Grammy from bogging down and, more important, covered a lot of ground. The only shocker came during a rather red-state tribute to Texas troublemaker Janis Joplin performed by newcomer Joss Stone and veteran Melissa Etheridge. They both had Joplin’s voice down cold. What’s more, Etheridge, who’s undergoing treatment for breast cancer, showed up with an unbewigged shaved head. I’m guessing Middle America found that more disturbing than the tasteless dress Sheryl Crow showed up in.

As for the feel-good moment of the night — a Band Aid–style tsunami-relief choir singing the Beatles’ "Across the Universe" — it didn’t feel so good. Norah Jones looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but it didn’t throw her pitch off nearly as much as Brian Wilson, who seemed to be singing in a key all his own as he smiled awkwardly. And forgive me for dishing, but somebody needs to let Velvet Revolver’s Scott Weiland know that he is not now and never will be David Bowie. So he really ought to give it up. Let’s just say he wasn’t one of the evening’s big winners.

Who did manage make enough noise to transcend Raymania? Well, you’d have to count host Queen Latifah, who also comported herself quite well in her guise as a jazz singer, as someone whose stock has risen in the wake of Grammy 47. And Kanye West’s year will come — he’s just getting started. Green Day, on the other hand, came into this year’s Grammys riding the wave of the kind of career-defining album that no one saw coming. Hell, they were opening for Blink-182 just a couple years ago. They haven’t even begun touring behind American Idiot and yet they’ve already charted two massive singles. I’m with Bono — indeed, U2’s uncharacteristically low-key performance left the night wide open for Green Day, who tore through a convincing "American Idiot" and except for a quick and largely innocuous quip from Billie Joe let the song’s politics speak for itself. After accepting the award for Best Rock Album, the Green Day frontman reminded everyone that rock and roll can be "dangerous and fun at the same time." Once upon a time, you didn’t have to remind people of that.