Stevie Nicks performed at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards Sunday night, January 31, 2010, in a "surprise" appearance.  Rounding up a song, Taylor Swift talked about fairy tales coming true and noted that one of her fairy tales was singing with Stevie Nicks.  Stevie then emerged and the two dueted briefly on Fleetwood Mac's hit Rhiannon.  Stevie then sang back up on  Swift's song You Belong To Me.

Reviews for the performance were not kind, with many critics noting that Taylor seemed to be off key.  Stevie garnered mostly praise and remarks that she was poorly served by the pairing with Swift.  Of course, Swift took home a prize Grammy for the night and is riding high these days.  By singing with her, Stevie introduced herself to a whole new generation of fans. 

Of course, fans on this website talked about Stevie's latest appearance breathlessly.  You can read the fast, furious and funny posts here. 

Here's a summary of the various media responses by Jim Bessman of the Los Angeles Examiner, February 6, 2010.

Taylor Swift's duet with Stevie Nicks during the Grammy Awards sure generated a lot of steam.

Bloggers have had a field day ripping into Swift's pitch-challenged singing during her segment with Stevie Nicks, which began with Swift singing "Today Was A Fairy Tale" solo then segued, after her scripted pronouncement "It's a fairy tale and an honor to share the stage with Stevie Nicks," into Fleetwood Mac's classic "Rhiannon" and Swift's "You Belong With Me.'

The Washington Post bluntly stated: "A night in the charmed life of Taylor Swift: Give an incredibly wretched vocal performance, go on to win the biggest Grammy of 2010 anyway." But even hometown Nashville paper The Tennessean's blogger snarked that Swift might have borrowed Jamie Foxx's pitch-fixing technology; another music industry poster blathered that her "dreadful" showing would likely kill her career.

Prompted into over-reaction, Swift's Big Machine label head Scott Borchetta blasted critics. He claimed in The Tennessean that Swift had a "technical issue" relating to hearing the sound mix, which is plausible ("That's just part of live TV," he said), and proclaimed her "the voice of this generation"--which probably narrows it too far down, but Swift surely seems to be at least one of whatever number of voices there are who speak to her 20 year-old age demo.

Borchetta further invoked the often true observation of critics "building something up and then wanting to tear it down"--except that in Swift's case, it really wasn't. Rather, this is an instance of an apparent artificial artist Grammy Awards show pairing that simply didn't work: Even if she had sung "Rhiannon" note-perfect, the sight of such a young country artist--even one with such a huge hit Grammy-winning album--seemingly trying to out-gypsy the beloved 61 year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend, proved way too much for older critics and bloggers who grew up with Nicks and saw Swift, for that moment at least, as a mere karaoke kid version.

It wasn't her intention, of course, but for Nicks' generation, Swift was downright disrespectful.