Trevor Noah Shows He Knows His Audience With Hilarious Grammy Opening

Comedian and recently unemployed jokester Trevor Noah opened the 65th Grammy Awards with an energetic intro that got music’s biggest night started with tons of momentum.

“For the first time in three years we are coming to you live from Los Angeles,” Noah said before deadpanning: “The best city in the world if you ignore a few other cities.”

This is Noah’s third time hosting the Grammys and his expertise was evident as he wove through the audience, dropping pop culture references and getting plenty of laughs — while also inspiring some already meme-worthy moments (like Lizzo desperately looking around for sight of Beyonce).

“Sex symbol of the globe, especially now that they killed off the green M&M,” he joked with Harry Styles, as he moved through the closely clustered tables. Seems like Noah also thinks we should let the M&M’s f–ck already. 

Like most award shows, the Grammys has suffered in the past from intro drought, a lack of energy from hosts that can often drag down the momentum of the entire event. But Noah, now the only person besides LL Cool J to host the Grammys three or more times, has clearly learned from past attempts and came to Sunday’s show with the prep to see it through.

This is Noah’s first time hosting since leaving his long-time gig at The Daily Show. While he’s due to start his standup tour following the show, he admitted to fellow late-night host James Corden that he’s excited to see what’s next.

“There are going to be new parts of life you discover: things you didn’t know you could do,” he said. “Things that you didn’t know that you wanted to do, waking up with your mind in almost a completely different dimension in a strange way.”