Bruce Springsteen released a surprise protest song<\/a> against “the state terror being visited” on Minneapolis in recent weeks by the enforcement agency. And ICE wasn’t far from many winners’ minds on the night.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"2026-02-02T031633Z_1155995870_HP1EM22093IOC_RTRMADP_3_AWARDS-GRAMMYS\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/49875c79b769dd53c2c1981f4e6a65a3.jpeg\")
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Billie Eilish spent her entire speech after winning Song of the Year calling for artists and fans to keep protesting ICE. (Reuters: Daniel Cole)<\/p>\n
Song of the Year winner Billie Eilish dedicated her entire speech to the plight of immigrants in the US today.<\/p>\n
“I don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no-one is illegal on stolen land,” she said, accepting the award for her song Wildflower.<\/p>\n
“It’s really hard to know what to say and what to do right now. I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting.<\/p>\n
“Our voices really do matter, and people matter, and ‘f*** ICE’ is all I want to say.”<\/p>\n
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Olivia Dean, fresh from her triple j Hottest 100 victory last weekend, was more subtle but just as firm when accepting her award for Best New Artist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m up here as the granddaughter of an immigrant,” Dean says in her humble acceptance speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m a product of bravery, and I think those people [immigrants] deserve to be celebrated. We’re nothing without each other.”<\/p>\n
Accepting the award for Record of the Year for her Kendrick Lamar-collab Luther, SZA appealed to those watching to maintain hope and faith.<\/p>\n
“Please don’t fall into despair,” SZA said.<\/p>\n
“We can go on, we need each other, we need to trust each other and trust ourselves. Trust your heart. We’re not governed by the government, we’re governed by God.”<\/p>\n
Do the Grammys reflect the shifting sound of pop?<\/p>\n
It was guaranteed that a new face would take away the night’s biggest award for Album of the Year \u2013 none of the nine nominees had won before \u2014 but Bad Bunny’s win feels especially significant.<\/p>\n
His Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos is the first Spanish-language album to win the big award in the Grammy’s 68-year history. The win comes at a time when a lot of Spanish-speaking Americans are feeling less at home than ever.<\/p>\n
“I dedicate this award to all the people that had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams,” he said in his acceptance speech.<\/p>\n
It comes on a night that could have shaken US pop dominance in the most profound way in recent history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The enormous success of Bad Bunny, K-Pop Demon Hunters, and former Blackpink singer Ros\u00e9 throughout 2025 set the stage for a winners’ podium not dominated by Western musicians and styles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, it was a mixed bag, with some legacy favourites edging out a full-scale shift.<\/p>\n
It’s not that Eilish’s stunning Wildflower didn’t deserve its plaudits. But in a field alongside K-Pop Demon Hunters smash Golden, Ros\u00e9’s solo breakout APT., and Bad Bunny’s DtMF, this year felt like the biggest embrace of non-Western pop music in a long time. To have that reflected at the Grammys would have been significant.<\/p>\n
Similar could be said about SZA and Kendrick Lamar’s Record of the Year win for Luther, though that win at least goes some way to addressing the historical snubbing of hip hop in the main Grammy categories.<\/p>\n
Aussies at the Grammys<\/p>\n
In a solid year for Australian representation at the Grammys, results were mixed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kevin Parker added to his packed trophy shelf after he won Best Dance\/Electronic Recording for Tame Impala’s track End Of Summer. He won his first Grammy last year as a guest on Justice’s Neverender but this is the first win for Tame Impala alone.<\/p>\n
Melbourne punks Amyl & The Sniffers missed out on Best Rock Performance, losing to Yungblud and his version of Black Sabbath\u2019s ballad Changes, recorded at last year’s Back to the Beginning concert.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Likewise, world-beating electro act RUFUS DU SOL missed out on the Best Dance\/Electronic Album award, which went to British singer FKA twigs for her album EUSEXUA, rounding out an up\u2011and\u2011down night for Australians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout history, musicians have played significant roles in protest movements, from anti\u2011war anthems to immigration rights. At tonight’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,27272,234088,9162,234087,447,134,62695,234086],"class_list":["post-453306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bad-bunny","tag-bad-bunny-ice","tag-billie-eilish","tag-billie-eilish-ice","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-grammys","tag-ice-grammys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}