Overall it wasn’t even close to the almost uniformly excellent 2011 telecast – but it’s three standout moments were more memorable than just about anything I can recall from the past decade of Grammy productions.

Here’s this year’s report card:

CLASSIC
Jennifer Hudson – Breathtaking, lump-in-the-throat moving, and if not technically flawless, well, who would fault her? So strange to think that 48 hours earlier this transformed Oscar winner had been telling Piers Morgan about singing duets with Whitney into her hairbrush as an admiring, aspiring child. Now she was on stage at Staples Center having to somehow summon the strength not to cry through one of her idol’s signature songs, and instead let the performance do the crying for us. I bet she bawled the moment she got off camera. Bet people will still tear up when they replay this in a montage at Grammy’s centennial. So stunningly right, the inevitable Whitney memorial concert doesn’t seem so necessary now.

Adele – A superb performance of renewed fortitude befitting such a glorious personal high: six wins, all but one of them a justifiable slam-dunk. (I’d have given short-form video to someone else.) Decades and decades from now, when Ms. Adkins gets her own Whitney-esque salute, they’ll play this comeback clip of her hollering “Rolling in the Deep” even more potently than she did on record. The capper on that song’s year of omnipresence, deservedly drawing an ecstatic reaction; Rihanna was blown away, Paul McCartney cheered enthusiastically.

Glen Campbell – What a rare breed of legend. Think Sir Paul, who beamed and sang along with a look of prideful admiration, would seriously give it a go in the same fashion were Alzheimer’s to set in? Doubtful. But the affable Campbell, beloved American icon of tunes and TV, got out there, before millions of viewers and a full Staples Center house full of celebrities, and did what he’s always done, complete with a Nashville-pro “thank you” mere moments into “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

Yes, he did say “on the road to my corizon” instead of horizon the first time he got to that line. Yes, it was a touch cringe-inducing to quite audibly hear him not have a clue what to do once the song was over. Yet he also kept right on shining, reducing the arena to an intimate Grand Ole Opry scene once the chorus hit – by which time Miranda Lambert and Lady Gaga, for starters, were swaying along side by side. “I really don’t mind the rain / And this smile can hide all the pain,” he sang, while in the crowd Joe Walsh danced with his wife, Marjorie Bach. You’d have never known how much he might already be suffering. Heart-warming and heart-breaking in equal measure, endearing, poignant, inspirational … incomparable.

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