Music?s biggest night aims to ?honor the past, celebrate the present and look always towards the future.? Last night?s 50th annual Grammy Awards featured dozens of performances by heavy hitters in the music industry. Almost all of the leading nominees performed, including Carrie Underwood, Feist, Amy Winehouse, Beyonce Knowles, the Foo Fighters, Herbie Hancock and Kanye West. The night was full of standout duets and collaborations between industry legends and contemporary artists. A Beatles tribute by the performers in Cirque du Soleil and the cast of Across the Universe featured ?A Day In the Life,? and ?Let it Be.? Several lifetime achievement awards were presented, and a massive gospel production honored Aretha Franklin as the 2008 Musicares Person of the Year. This menagerie of performances made it easy to forget that the Grammys are an awards ceremony: Out of 110 awards categories, only a handful were televised.

Alicia Keys won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for ?No One.? Carrie Underwood won Best Country Song for her hit ?Before He Cheats,? but Vince Gill took the award for Best Country Album. Rihanna won Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for ?Umbrella,? featuring Jay-Z, and The White Stripes won Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Performance. Not surprisingly, both Justin Timberlake and Bruce Springsteen were also successful in multiple categories.

The Foo Fighters did beat the Boss in the fight for Best Rock Album with Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace. In the unconventional and rebellious spirit of rock and roll, they performed for fans standing outside of the Grammys rather than inside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where the event was held. The Foo Fighters also won Best Hard Rock Performance.

As anticipated, Amy Winehouse fared extremely well, winning five awards, including Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist, although she was actually not even in attendance. She delivered spastic performances of ?You Know I?m No Good,? and ?Rehab? from London via satellite. Winehouse appeared more sober than usual, but reacted with a combination of terror and shock when presented with the award for Record of The Year, which she dedicated to ?my Blake incarcerated.? With five awards, Amy Winehouse joins the list of talented women to receive the most Grammys in one night.

The most electrifying performance of the night was undoubtedly Kanye West and Daft Punk?s collaboration on ?Stronger.? West also delivered an emotional performance of ?Hey Mama,? a song about his mother, Donda West, who passed away just this year. The extremely moving performance brought out a different side of the usually ostentatious rap star.

However, his conceit returned shortly thereafter upon winning Best Rap Album. West told fellow nominee Common that if he wanted to win he should not have dropped his album in the same year as Graduation. West also warned Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse that he better not see them on the stage receiving the award for Album of the Year.

Kanye got his wish. In a surprising upset, jazz legend Herbie Hancock beat both West and Winehouse for Album of the Year with River: The Joni Letters, a tribute to Joni Mitchell. The album was Hancock?s forty-seventh, and signifies the ?first and only time a jazz artist has won Album of the Year.? Well, those guys had to surprise us sometime.

True to its motto, the Grammys honored the best, and one can only imagine what sort of musical surprises await the industry in the coming year.