Sunday night’s Grammy Awards show was one for the books, although this can’t really be credited to the show’s performances. Although the three-hour bonanza was jam-packed with over 20 performances, few stood out. Most artists opted for their slower tracks, preferring vocal prowess and emotional showmanship to crafting any real excitement or energy.

However, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some standout performances or awards among the snooze-inducing stretches. Here are our staff’s top three most-remembered moments from the 57th Grammy Awards. – Cadenza staff

1. Kanye’s Entire Night

Mark Matousek

The Grammys are a farce, an interminable ode to the ultra-conservative tastes of its clueless voters. Kanye West is the opposite of the Grammys: always moving, always striving, always seething. No matter how many records he sells, plaudits he receives or artists he inspires, he’ll always have a chip on his shoulder; some perceived slight gnawing at his enormous sense of self-worth.

But there’s a reason we take his megalomania seriously. He puts in the work, constantly fixing what ain’t broke. Reinventing himself once more, he’s moving from “Yeezus”’ scorched-earth screeds to the soft-edged contentment of fatherhood.

That much was clear during his performance of “Only One.” Illuminated by a single beam of light, West created a visually striking visual complement to the song’s plaintive minimalism. There is no obfuscation, no interplay between person and persona. The song lives and breathes love through each of its pores. Likewise, Kanye stripped his performance of typical Grammy flourishes—no backup singers or orchestras or semi-logical collaborators. Just him and his light, his only one.

His night of emphatic understatement continued with “FourFiveSeconds.” Though he played second fiddle to a magnetic Rihanna, his tightly contained fury captivated all the same. He also provided the ceremony’s most overlooked highlight by asking Paul McCartney, without a hint of irony, to pay his bail in the event of his imprisonment because sometimes dreams do come true.

The apex, of course, came with his brief, tension-fraught stage crash following Beck’s surprise Album of the Year victory. He returned to his seat without taking the mic, averting another PR massacre, and would later voice his frustrations with Beyonce’s loss in no uncertain terms. But at that moment, nothing needed to be said. He’d already won the Grammys without taking home a single award.

2. Kendrick and ‘the blacker the berry’

Wesley Jenkins

Last year’s Grammy’s were a bit of a debacle for Kendrick Lamar. After dominating his performance with Imagine Dragons and completely overshadowing the alt-rock group, Kendrick was shut out from all seven awards for which he was nominated, including Best Rap Album, where he was bested by Macklemore.

The white rapper’s follow-up apology leaked via his own Instagram to Kendrick only made the slight so much worse. Whether race was a factor or not, Kendrick deserved the award and everyone in the room knew it.

This year, things went a little bit differently. Kendrick laid low for most of 2014, only releasing one single—“i”—but that was enough to win Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance. All had seemingly been corrected in Grammy-land, and the race issues of 2013 corrected.

Except in a year where racial prejudices have been on the forefront and rappers across all spectrums have released responses, a win for Kendrick’s upbeat, uncontroversial single meant nothing. Until the next morning.

The biggest win of the Grammy’s wasn’t Beck or “i” or anything else on the stage; it was Kendrick’s new single, “The Blacker the Berry,” released the morning after. With lyrics that clarify positions he’s taken earlier and an ominous tone, “The Blacker the Berry” is Kendrick at his best. This song is the return of ferocious Kendrick, holding nothing back, calling himself out by the end “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street / when gang banging make me kill a n—- blacker than me / Hypocrite!”

This song was Kendrick’s Grammy statement. “i” was there to prove that yes, he can win awards; “The Blacker the Berry” was there to prove that he doesn’t need to win awards to be the best.

3. Sia’s Performance featuring Kristen Wiig

Jessie McNiel

You probably weren’t expecting to see Kristen Wiig doing a completely serious, gut-wrenching interpretive dance on the Grammys—but she did, and it was great. Sia, who has struggled with depression and bipolar disorder, no longer shows her face in public in a sort of anti-fame move, instead letting uber-talented 12-year-old Maddie Ziegler represent her as a dancing alter ego.

Together, Ziegler and Wiig held the spotlight while Sia sang “Chandelier” facing the back of the stage, tucked into a corner of their onstage set. While Wiig certainly doesn’t have the ballet background Ziegler boasts, the emotional power of their duo was killer, playing out the interior monologue of a woman at war with herself.

Wiig might have made some funny faces, but she was remarkably unflinching—there was little hint of the goofiness of her many “Saturday Night Live” characters, instead just leaving an impressively versatile actress, and the end result was just as powerful as Sia’s raw, gutsy vocals. It ended up being one of the standout performances of the night, despite the fact that artist herself never showed her face.