Arcade Fire manager Scott Rodger has responded to allegations by media mogul Steve Stoute  and record industry gadfly Bob Lefsetz that the band closed out the Grammy Awards this year with a second performance because the Recording Academy knew the group would win the ceremony's final award for Album of the Year.

Grammy Awards: Complete Coverage

In an email to Lefsetz's newsletter The Lefsetz Letter, Rodger explained that the Arcade Fire performed last at the show because ratings are typically low at the end of the broadcast, and the band was one of the least-known acts on the bill. (He wrote that he would have preferred if the band had played earlier in the program.) Rodger also insisted that the band's second performance was not part of a "big plot" but rather an agreement with Grammy producers to play out the show's credits, depending on how much time was left in the broadcast. He said that the band was never guaranteed time at the end of the ceremony.

Photos: Arcade Fire's Greatest Performances

Rodger later asserted that the Arcade Fire did not lobby for their Grammy in any way, and that the band, not its label Merge Records, paid their own overhead in order to perform at the event.

A letter from Arcade Fire's manager (in reaction to Steve Stoute's Open Letter to The Grammys) [Brooklyn Vegan]

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