The artists scheduled to perform at this year’s Grammys include several Tiny Desk veterans, so now’s a great time to revisit their sets; plus, watch new shows from Timo Andres, Katie Von Schleicher and Thee Sacred Souls.
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This Sunday brings an event that’s been dubbed “Music’s Biggest Night” by no less an authority than that event’s PR department. So as you breathlessly await the three-and-a-half-hour music-industry infomercial that is the 66th Grammy Awards, might I direct your attention to some relevant Tiny Desk concerts?
With more than 1,000 videos in our series, it would be a colossal undertaking to serve up a rundown of every current Grammy nominee ever to perform at the Tiny Desk, and if there’s one thing I abhor, it’s a colossal undertaking. So watch this space next week, when we’ll run down all the Tiny Desk concerts to feature freshly minted Grammy winners. In the meantime, here’s every Tiny Desk concert to feature an artist that is slated to perform on the 2024 iteration of Music’s Biggest Night. (More are being added all the time, but this is based on the list of who’s been announced as of this morning.)
We’ve never featured announced performers such as Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel, Luke Combs, SZA or Travis Scott — which is a shame, given that each has at least one fan on the NPR Music Team (and I can tell you from firsthand experience that we’ve made efforts to book several of them). But you can get to know these magnificent artists in our deep archives:
Burna Boy. The Nigerian singer-songwriter is one of the biggest stars in African music — and, heck, one of the biggest stars in music, period. Burna Boy performed songs from his breakthrough album, African Giant, in 2019.
Billie Eilish. Billie Eilish’s colossal awards season continues at Sunday’s Grammys, as she’s heavily nominated — both here and at next month’s Oscars — for her ubiquitous Barbie single, “What Was I Made For?” In 2020, she and her brother Finneas stretched the boundaries of what a Tiny Desk (home) concert could look like.
Dua Lipa. Eilish wasn’t the only superstar to bring impressive visuals to 2020’s still-developing palette of Tiny Desk (home) concerts. Performing with her band for the first time in many months, Lipa gave a joyful and stylish performance of some of her biggest hits, including “Levitating” and “Don’t Stop Now.” (She set a record along the way: At 120 million views and counting, it’s the most-watched Tiny Desk concert ever recorded.)
Olivia Rodrigo. Like Eilish and Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo spiced up our Tiny Desk (home) concerts series, as she performed songs from SOUR at a Division of Motor Vehicles outpost in 2021. (If you’ll recall, her breakthrough single was titled “drivers license.”) Unlike Eilish and Lipa (both of whom are also among her fellow nominees for the song of the year Grammy), O-Rod followed up that performance by gracing the actual Tiny Desk just a couple months ago, as she performed four songs from the heavily Grammy-nominated GUTS.
U2. U2 will perform at the Grammys — though in this case, “at the Grammys” technically means “from Las Vegas’ famed Sphere, which traps the band in a prison from which its members may never escape.” That show ought to bring a fair bit of spectacle to the telecast, but you can also catch half of U2 (that’d be Bono and The Edge) unplugged at the Tiny Desk just last year, shortly before they were sentenced to live out their days under the Sphere’s gigantic terrifying watchful unblinking eye.
The presenters at Sunday night’s awards also include a few Tiny Desk veterans — lookin’ at you, Maluma — and more are sure to be added between now and the commencement of what we are, once again, compelled by force to describe as Music’s Biggest Night.
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Tiny Desk Contest update
This year’s 10th annual Tiny Desk Contest is officially open for submissions! The team is busily digging through the entries we’ve received, and there’ve already been some beauties.
Elizabeth Gillis/NPR
Recent Tiny Desks
In honor of Philip Glass’ 87th birthday, pianist Timo Andres showed up to perform a pair of the composer’s etudes. In addition to the beautiful music, we also scored a sweet Philip Glass bobblehead for our shelves of weird, wonderful Tiny Desk detritus.
Katie Von Schleicher knows how to shoot her shot: Backed by a mighty eight-piece band, the singer-songwriter seized the opportunity to ask the Tiny Desk crowd if anyone knew Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, in the hopes that he might one day become her best friend. It’s still not too late, Dwayne, if you’re reading this!
The San Diego trio Thee Sacred Souls brought satin-smooth vocals and classic melodies to a five-song set that spanned many eras of rock and soul.
NPR’s great and good Bobby Carter has described BLK ODYSSY as “the modern personification of funk.”
The Polish pianist and composer Hania Rani blurred the lines of ambient, classical and house music.
Around public radio
WFUV in New York City welcomed the singer-songwriter Ella O'Connor Williams, a.k.a. Squirrel Flower, to their studio, and her performance of “Alley Light” provides a beautiful showcase for her stunning voice.
KEXP in Seattle hosted the always-elegant Blonde Redhead for a live session.
KCRW had the pleasure of filming a Slowdive concert, and the band dipped into its magical ’90s catalog.
WRTI’s Alex Ariff spoke with composer Anna Clyne, who wrote one of our favorite pieces of 2020 — and just keeps getting better.
Here’s one from the archives, just so y’all know how ahead-of-the-game public radio stations are when it comes to discovering new talent: Vocalo recorded R&B star Ravyn Lenae six years ago, before she’d even turned 20.
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