The Grammy Awards are on Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS, but I doubt many people care. Aretha Franklin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and John Fogerty are scheduled to perform, but none of the contemporary acts comes close to approaching the innovation, passion and longevity of those four.

And, unless Amy Winehouse manages to show, odds are no raw, unchoreographed moments like Bob Dylan’s grungy, mumbly quasiprotest “Masters of War” in 1991 during the Gulf War, which left everyone scratching their heads, will happen.

But Beyonce is usually good, given the right material, and I am looking forward to seeing Feist. Especially since I can brag that I was enjoying her albums — 2004’s “Let it Die” and this year’s nominee in three categories, “The Reminder,” — several months before everyone else heard her sing “1234” on the iPod nano commercial.

However, I don’t have high hopes for a performance from Nashville, Tenn., pin-up Carrie Underwood. Nor do I particularly care to hear how Fergie sounds in a duet with John Legend, who deserves better. And you can bet that I’ll head to the kitchen when Alicia Keys, with her flat singing and clumsy piano playing, take the stage.

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It’s the 50th year for the Grammys, and a lot has changed since Henry Mancini’s “The Music from Peter Gunn” was awarded best album in 1959. Digital file sharing cuts into profits of the music industry, especially the big labels, and no one has an idea what the uses and abuses of technology will bring.

Whatever happens, singers, songwriters and musicians will always make music for the same reason that writers write and painters paint. They have to. They’re made that way, and they’ve worked to become better. They have something to say, and, if it’s good, someone will want to hear it, because they need what good music offers.

It can entertain, motivate and soothe. And it can bring a little bit of joy in the oddest places, as it did for me this week. I was at Wal-Mart looking for a lock to use with my locker at the gym I just joined. It’s the first time I’ve ever attempted a workout program, and just about all of my muscles were still aching from my first round of weight training two days before.

I also had a headache and looked in four different places before finding the locks tucked away on the far end of the hardware section.

I grabbed what I needed and was on my way to the distant checkout lanes when Van Morrison came on the in-store radio. It wasn’t “Brown-Eyed Girl,” “Moondance” or “Domino,” the big hits you tend to hear. It was “Astral Weeks” from the 1968 album of the same name. That album makes me feel a little more human and a little less lonely every time I listen to it.

Before Van sang the first line (If I ventured in the slipstream / between the viaducts of your dreams) my momentary stress dissolved, and I was grinning, happy to be reminded that there is such a thing as beauty.

Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.