The Grammy Awards are always filled with wonderfully weird moments. But strange “bordered on propaganda,” Variety wrote, when one segment of Sunday’s telecast showed a series of news headlines extolling the power of music to solve the world’s social challenges.

Problem was: They were all fake. Like the headline: “Protest turns into concert,” accompanied by a photo of a police officer marching arm in arm with protesters at a George Floyd demonstration. The subhead reads: “Police put down weapons and sing in support of protesters.”

This fake headline may have been at best, aspirational … but that photo was real enough. And did you notice who that police officer was? None other than Paul Pazen. And no one was more surprised to be featured on Sunday’s Grammy Awards telecast than Denver’s very own former Denver Police Chief, who retired in October.

“It was a complete surprise,” Pazen told the Denver Gazette. “I had no warning or communication that this was coming.  The Grammys and I are an odd mix – because I may be the worst singer on the planet.”

The photo of Pazen was taken by Michael Ciaglo on June 2, 2020, when Pazen’s surprise move to join protesters in downtown Denver turned into a real headline in this newspaper: “Denver police chief walks arm-in-arm with protesters in powerful moment of peace.”

But back to the Grammys spot, which goes on to show a woman reading the “protest turns into concert” story in a fake paper called “The New World” as she’s drinking her morning coffee. Cut to another headline: “Music is medicine,” along with the subhead: “First Ever Music Prescriptions Issued.” A cover of Elvis Presley’s “If I Can Dream” plays underneath. 

Then Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, appears on screen to say, duh, these aren’t real headlines. “But they could be,” he says – all in an effort to highlight the work of the Recording Academy. Cut to the headline “Every Public School will Have a Music Educator.” 

“He then went on to talk about the achievements of the Recording Academy, sidestepping any tangible ways this future could be realized,” wrote Variety’s Lovia Hyarkye. On the heels of another brutal police murder (Tyre Nichols), this message rang hollow and even sinister, advertising a nonexistent present and a future that can’t exist without radical change.”

No comment (yet) from the Denver Police Department on the use of the Pazen image on the Grammys telecast. No one would argue promoting the message that music can save the world – but this was a very poorly timed (and yes, weird) overreach.