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It’s turning out to be ladies night at the Grammy Awards as chart-toppers Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga dominated the stage at well loved music’s largest night.

Coming into Sunday with a leading 10 nominations, pop diva Beyoncé proved a dominant force as she picked up four trophies at the non-televised Los Angeles gala Sunday afternoon: contemporary R&B album for I am…Sacha Fierce, best R&B song and best female R&B vocal performance for Single Ladies (Place a Ring On It) and traditional R&B performance for At Last, from the film Cadillac Records.

Beyoncé performs at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)She then earned the televised show’s first award of the night — song of the year for Single Ladies (Place a Ring On It) — and turned in a spirited performance of her song If I Were a Boy and Alanis Morissette’s You Outta Know.

Country ingenue Swift was honoured with the best country album Grammy for her bestselling release, Fearless.

“This is my first time walking up those stairs to accept a Grammy on national television!” she exclaimed. “I just feel like I’m standing here accepting an impossible dream.”

She showed as much enthusiasm as when she accepted a pair of trophies (female country vocal performance and country song for White Horse) at the pre-show ceremony and declared, “This is my first Grammy, you guys!”

Outrageous dance-pop artist Lady Gaga kicked off Sunday night’s broadcast with a fiery, eye-popping performance that segued into a duet with British icon Elton John. She too started the gala with a pair of Grammys already under her belt: dance recording for Poker Face and electronic/dance album for The Fame.

The Black Eyed Peas, another top contender this year, came into the broadcast having already won a trio of Grammys: for their album The E.N.D. (pop vocal album) and their hit songs I Gotta Feeling (pop performance by a duo or group with vocals) and Boom Boom Pow (small-form music video).

Other winners included:

• Kings of Leon, who netted the coveted record of the year honour for their track Use Somebody.
• Country’s Zac Brown Band scored the title of best new artist, after success of its debut album The Foundation.
• Hit TV satirist Stephen Colbert, whose A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! was named best comedy album.
• Green Day, who picked up best rock album for 21st Century Breakdown.

Along with Gaga, Beyoncé, Black Eyed Peas and country group Lady Antebellum, performers also included Green Day, who took the stage with cast members of their musical American Idiot, and singer Pink, who participated in an impressive aerial acrobatics routine while singing her ballad I Don’t Believe You.

The show is also to feature a pair of special performances.

Céline Dion, Usher, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson will take part in a 3-D tribute to Michael Jackson, while Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli will honour the classic Simon and Garfunkel song Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

99 categories

Earlier in the afternoon, a quick-paced pre-telecast gala — hosted by Grammy-winning singers Kurt Elling and Tia Carrere — awarded trophies in 99 categories.

Several Canadians were among those early winners.

Neil Young snagged the award for best boxed or special limited edition package for his elaborately designed box set The Archives, Vol. 1 1963-1972.

The Canadian music legend had also been honoured during the weekend’s festivities as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ MusiCares person of the year.

Actor Michael J. Fox won the best spoken word album Grammy for Always Looking Up, based on his book Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist — which explores his personal philosophy amid an ongoing struggle with Parkinson’s disease and tales of other optimists who have triumphed over adversity.

Crooner Michael Bublé was honoured with the award for traditional pop vocal album, for his album Michael Bublé Meets Madison Square Garden.

Canadian acts who failed to win included rap newcomer Drake, Montreal duo Beast, rock group Nickelback, hit producer David Foster, R&B singer Melanie Fiona and aboriginal singers Northern Cree.

Other pre-telecast highlights included:

• Engineered album, non-classical: Ellipse, by Imogen Heap, who arrived out of breath onstage from having just arrived moments before. The quirky artist turned up clutching a transparent parasol and bearing a sort-of electronic scarf featuring a scrolling Twitter feed.
• Jazz vocal album: Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling sings the music of Coltrane and Hartman, by gala co-host Kurt Elling. The singer noted that it was his first win after nine nominations.
• Remixed Recording: When Like Takes Over, by David Guetta with Kelly Rowland. French D.J. Guetta noted that he received “five nominations, so it means that finally DJ culture and dance music is growing in America… I’m not a real musician, trained. I cannot write music, but I started remixing music and that’s how I started making music.”
• Traditional folk album: High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project, by Loudon Wainwright III, who finished his acceptance speech by thanking his late ex-wife Kate McGarrigle, “who taught me how to frail the banjo 40 years ago.” Canadian folk icon McGarrigle, mother of singers Martha and Rufus Wainwright, will be honoured at a memorial in Montreal on Monday.
• Metal Performance: Dissident Aggressor, by Judas Priest. Singer Rob Halford noted that the win came after the five Grammy nominations. “Judas Priest has been making metal for over 35 years… Around the planet, we like what we do.”

Taylor Swift reacts to winning the the best female country vocal performance award during the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards’ pre-telecast show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. (Robyn Beck/Getty Images)

Barack Obama’s new budget to be released Monday says the deficit could reach $1.6 trillion U.S., according to a congressional official provided the information from a White House summary document. (Reuters)

U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed budget predicts the national deficit will crest at a record-breaking nearly $1.6 trillion US in the current fiscal year, then start to go in 2011 to just below $1.3 trillion.

Still, the administration’s new budget to be released Monday says deficits over the next decade will average 4.5 per cent of the size of the economy, a level that economists say is dangerously high if not addressed.

A congressional official provided the information, which comes from a White House summary document circulating freely on Capitol Hill and among Washington lobbyists. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending proposal is not supposed to be made public until Monday.

Details of the administration’s budget headed for Congress include an additional $100 billion to attack painfully high unemployment. The proposed $3.8-trillion budget would provide billions more to pull the country out of the recession, while increasing taxes on the wealthy and imposing a spending freeze on many government programs.

Administration projections show the deficit never dropping below $700 billion, even under assumptions that war costs will drop precipitously to just $50 billion in some years instead of more than three times that this year and next.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration believed “somewhere in the $100-billion range” would be the appropriate amount for a new jobs measure made up of a business tax credit to encourage hiring, increased infrastructure spending and money from the government’s bailout fund to get banks to increase loans to struggling small businesses.

That price tag would be below a $174-billion bill passed by the House of Representatives in December but far higher than a measure that could come to the Senate floor this week.

Gibbs said it was vital for Democrats and Republicans to place aside their differences to pass a bill that addresses jobs, the country’s No. 1 concern.

“I reckon that would be a powerful signal to send to the American people,” Gibbs said in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.

Job creation was a key theme of the budget Obama was sending Congress on Monday, a document designed, as was the president’s address, to reframe his young presidency after a protracted battle over health care hurt his standing in public opinion polls and contributed to a series of Democratic election defeats.

Obama’s $3.8-trillion spending plot for the 2011 budget year that starts Oct. 1 attempts to navigate between the opposing goals of pulling the country out of a deep recession and dealing with a budget deficit that soared to an all-time high of $1.42 trillion last year.

Congress debates

Obama’s new budget will set off months of debate in the Democrat-controlled Congress, especially in an election year in which Republicans are hoping to use attacks against government overspending to gain seats. Obama has argued that he inherited a deficit of more than $1 trillion and was forced to increase spending to stabilize the financial system and combat the worst recession since the 1930s.

Obama’s new budget was expected to repeat many of the themes of his first budget. But in a bow to worries over the soaring deficits, the administration is proposing a three-year freeze on spending for a wide swath of domestic government agencies.

Military, veterans, homeland security and huge benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare would not feel the pinch.

The freeze would affect $447 billion in spending and is designed to save $250 billion over a decade. But, it would not fall equally on all domestic agencies. Some would see budget cuts to free up spending for programs the administration wants to expand, such as education and civilian research efforts.

NASA’s mission to return astronauts to the moon would be grounded with the space agency instead getting an additional $5.9 billion over five years to encourage private companies to build, launch and operate their own spacecraft for the benefit of NASA and others. NASA would pay the private companies to carry U.S. astronauts.

Obama’s budget repeats his recommendations for an overhaul of the U.S. health-care system, the fight that dominated his first year in office. It proposes to get billions of dollars in savings from the Medicare program and again seeks increased taxes on the wealthy by limiting the benefits they receive from tax deductions. Both thoughts have met strong resistance in Congress.

Gibbs insisted Sunday that the president’s push for health care was “still inside the five-yard line,” but Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, also appearing on CNN, said the public was overwhelmingly against the bill and the administration should “place it on the shelf, go back and start over.”

Taylor Swift reacts to winning the the best female country vocal performance award during Sunday’s 52nd Annual Grammy Awards’ pre-telecast show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. (Robyn Beck/Getty Images) Canadians Neil Young, Michael J. Fox, Michael Bublé and American pop starlet Taylor Swift were among the early Grammy Award-winners in Los Angeles during Sunday’s non-televised part of the annual musical honours.

Young picked up one of the evening’s first prizes, snagging the award for best boxed or special limited edition package for his elaborately designed box set The Archives, Vol. 1 1963-1972.

The Canadian music legend had also been honoured during the weekend’s festivities as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ MusiCares person of the year.

Actor Fox won the best spoken word album Grammy for Always Looking Up, based on his book Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist — which explores his personal philosophy amid an ongoing struggle with Parkinson’s disease and tales of other optimists who have triumphed over adversity.

Bublé was honoured with the award for traditional pop vocal album, for his album Michael Bublé Meets Madison Square Garden.

Canadian acts who failed to win included rap newcomer Drake, Montreal duo Beast, rock group Nickelback, hit producer David Foster, R&B singer Melanie Fiona and aboriginal singers Northern Cree.

99 categories

The quick-paced pre-telecast gala, hosted by Grammy-winning singers Kurt Elling and Tia Carrere, awarded trophies in 99 categories.

While a host of the winners weren’t in attendance, one of the entire evening’s top contenders was: country ingenue Taylor Swift.

The thrilled 20-year-ancient was beaming as she collected two trophies for her song White Horse as best female country vocal performance and best country song (which she shared with co-writer Liz Rose).

“This is my first Grammy, you guys! This is a Grammy!” she squealed as she took the stage for the first time.

“I live in awe of the people who I was nominated with in this category…Thank you to anyone who is a Grammy voter.”

Swift, who is slated to perform with Stevie Nicks during the televised gala later on Sunday night, is also nominated in the highly coveted categories of record of the year, song of the year (both for the track You Belong With Me) and album of the year (for Fearless ).

Her stiffest competition is from rival top nominees Beyoncé, The Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga — all of whom also won early trophies but were not present to accept.

Beyoncé snagged four R&B Grammys: for Single Ladies – Place a Ring on it (best R&B song and best female R&B vocal performance), At Last (traditional R&B performance) and I am…Sacha Fierce (contemporary R&B album).

Gaga picked up a pair of trophies: best dance recording for Poker Face and best electronic/dance album for The Fame.

The Black Eyed Peas scored three Grammys, for their album The E.N.D. (pop vocal album) and their hit songs I Gotta Feeling (pop performance by a duo or group with vocals) and Boom Boom Pow (small-form music video).

Other pre-telecast highlights included:

• Engineered album, non-classical: Ellipse, by Imogen Heap, who arrived out of breath onstage from having just arrived moments before. The quirky artist turned up clutching a transparent parasol and bearing a sort-of electronic scarf featuring a scrolling Twitter feed.
• Jazz vocal album: Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling sings the music of Coltrane and Hartman, by gala co-host Kurt Elling. The singer noted that it was his first win after nine nominations.
• Remixed Recording: When Like Takes Over, by David Guetta with Kelly Rowland. French D.J. Guetta noted that he received “five nominations, so it means that finally DJ culture and dance music is growing in America… I’m not a real musician, trained. I cannot write music, but I started remixing music and that’s how I started making music.”
• Traditional folk album: High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project, by Loudon Wainwright III, who finished his acceptance speech by thanking his late ex-wife Kate McGarrigle, “who taught me how to frail the banjo 40 years ago.” Canadian folk icon McGarrigle, mother of singers Martha and Rufus Wainwright, will be honoured at a memorial in Montreal on Monday.
• Metal Performance: Dissident Aggressor, by Judas Priest. Singer Rob Halford noted that the win came after the five Grammy nominations. “Judas Priest has been making metal for over 35 years… Around the planet, we like what we do.”

The Grammy Awards telecast will air live from Los Angeles, beginning Sunday at 8 p.m. ET.

Along with a host of medley performances showcasing prominent nominees, the televised show will feature a pair of special performances.

Céline Dion, Usher, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson will take part in a 3-D tribute to Michael Jackson, while Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli will honour the classic Simon and Garfunkel song Bridge Over Troubled Waters.