Portland-based outfit Portugal. The Man took home their first GRAMMY hardware last night, taking home the prize for “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance” for their worldwide smash hit “Feel It Still“. The genre-elusive group’s win came as something of a surprise, as it was up against several other hugely successful tracks from various ends of the pop spectrum.
On a red carpet interview by Billboard where he was asked what it is like to have a big hit after eight albums, bassist Zach Carothers says, “There’s amazing artists that come out of nowhere that are just amazingly talented.”
“We weren’t those people,” he continued. “We had to work for a while and get better. We had to play thousands of shows, we had to make those albums and keep getting better, and we’re all about hard work, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
When the group took the stage to accept their award, they were surely excited about the honor, but true to form, they still remained lighthearted and mischievous on one of the music industry’s biggest stages. In his sincere, heartfelt speach, bassist Zach Carothers thanked a small list of people and shared his love and respect for the indigenous peoples of the band’s native Alaska and beyond. While he did so, his bandmates mimed drinking from the GRAMMY statuette like a goblet and even, it appears, jokingly wiping their ass with it.
However, the video above cuts out just a second or two early, and misses Carothers’ final words: Carothers ended his sincere acceptance speech with a brief, cheeky “Hail Satan!,” likely riffing on the fact that their category’s presentation was directly preceded by a string of Gospel and Christian award categories. So Portugal. The Man may be GRAMMY-winners now, but don’t worry – It looks like they’re not going to start taking themselves too seriously.
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