"The 54th Grammy Awards will be remembered as a story of two women with towering, timeless voices — Adele and Whitney Houston — one representing youthful triumph and boundless possibility, the other a reminder of fresh tragedy and a life unraveled," The Los Angeles Times reports. "Adele, the 23-year-old British singer-songwriter, took home six awards including album, record and song of the year, a trophy bounty that puts a gold-plating on a commercial and critical success story that has dramatically defied the grim gravities of today's economically-challenged recording industry."

Toure followed Adele around last year. "Adele's second album, 21, debuted at Number One in the U.K. and U.S., and has sold 3.5 million overall, a development she calls 'pretty intense.' She recently started smoking again – she claims she's back to only seven cigarettes a day, but over a few hours, she smokes at least that," says the resulting Rolling Stone piece. "She has one of the great voices of the past few years – a mix of soul power, tender sweetness and scary emotional transparency."

Oliver Marre profiled the late, great Whitney Houston back in 2009. "On the release of her first album in 1985, Whitney Houston was hailed by the New York Times as 'an exceptional vocal talent'. Last month, her latest album was welcomed more cautiously by the same newspaper: 'She's tentatively climbing back into the pop machinery, no longer invincible but showing a diva's determination,'" he wrote. "In the intervening 24 years, Houston has achieved the heights of extraordinary fame – according to the Recording Industry Association of America, she is the fourth-biggest-selling female star of all time – and the depths of tabloid infamy."

Jonah Weiner managed a definitive piece on Kanye West, who won four awards Sunday night, without even speaking to him. "West has agreed to speak candidly to me on a wide variety of subjects, to run his mouth but remain pithy at the same time, and to grant me virtually round-the-clock access to his life—no publicist popping his head in and telling me there's five minutes left. As conditions go for writing a profile, these are extremely favorable," he writes. "No, I don't get to ask any questions, but I do get a constantly updating record of West's thoughts, whereabouts, cravings, jokes, meals, flirtations, bon mots, and on and on. In the face of a mountainous info dump like West's, isn't the basic work of profiling—building from the raw material of everything someone says and does toward a more focused sense of who they are—as relevant as ever?"

Bon Iver won the award for best new artist. But "Who, what, and where is Bon Iver?" That's what Jon Caramanica asked and answered last year.

Paul McCartney performed twice. And back in 2005 Josh Tyrangiel told the story of how he managed to release his best album in years – even if it wasn't anywhere near his best album ever.