As Feist celebrated her 35th birthday earlier this year with an intimate dinner among friends, she was momentarily distracted by the intense flickering of a television in a nearby room. The images were bizarre — motorbikes on a stage accompanied by pyrotechnics and music. Whatever it was seemed outlandish and jarring. What, she wondered, could be the spectacle?

It wasn’t until she got closer to the television that the frenetic, choreographed commotion made sense. It was the telecast of the Grammy Awards. Only three years earlier, she was part of that scene, performing “1234,” the song that would make the former indie artist a global sensation — in a different out-of-context performance.