Steven Van Zandt: Musician Applauds Jennifer Hudson's Whitney Houston Tribute

So apparently some fans haven't been very kind about Jennifer Hudson's musical tribute to Whitney Houston at the Grammy Awards, when she sang the iconic 'I Will Always Love You.'
Despite almost no notice and an incredible amount of pressure and emotion, some fans and critics are chastising the singer, saying she should have performed the song in its entirety. Hudson sang a condensed version, and added a "We love you" to the end.

Steven Van Zandt, 'Sopranos' actor and well-known guitarist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, weighed in on her performance while doing press for his Netflix TV show 'Lilyhammer.' Van Zandt was at the Grammys and saw the performance firsthand.

"People don't realize when you sing, and you're singing something emotional -- and this has happened to me -- if you sing the right sequence of notes, you involuntarily cry, just from the combination of notes, and your throat closes up," he told Spinner.

"That's the magical thing that music does. You don't even expect it sometimes. In order to communicate emotion, you must be removed from the emotion to do it -- physically. In her case, she couldn't be removed from the emotion. The fact that she got through that thing as well as she did was just miraculous."

As for the Grammys ceremony itself, Van Zandt believes that Houston's passing added an intensity to the awards that he's never seen before.

"It wasn't overly sombre, which is what I was worried about," he said. "Instead of it turning sombre, it made everything more intense. Everybody kind of stepped it up a notch. That combined with the wonderful production. Every song was a major production! It reminded me of the Super Bowl. Coldplay, McCartney, Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift... all terrific. I thought it was maybe the best Grammys ever."

Not far off, it seems, since it was the second-most-watched Grammys ceremony of all time, coming in just below the 1984 production.