Okay, are we being punked?
For once, we don’t need to talk about Taylor Swift. This is about the snubs and surprises of the Grammy nominations, and the three-time Album of the Year winner did exactly what we expected her to, earning six nods behind Midnights. (Okay, maybe “Anti-Hero” deserved a Best Music Video slot, but alas.) In fact, most of the biggest artists of the past year and change showed up on the list. Even with fewer opportunities in the Big Four categories, which went from ten to eight selections each, the Academy spread the love, giving 12 artists at least six nods. Yet there was still plenty of room for surprises. (Also, this being the Grammys, people are surely finding reasons to be mad.) Here are the biggest takeaways.
Okay, are we being punked?
Because this is actually a pretty inoffensive (dare I say good?) slate of top nominees! The requisite heavy-hitters are there, and most of the up-top surprises are pleasant: Victoria Monét for Record of the Year, Janelle Monáe for Album of the Year, the War and Treaty for Best New Artist. It’s also definitely one of the most in-touch — and youngest — slates of top nominees the Grammys have put together. If there’s a major flaw, it’s the lack of rap and country in the Big Four. But as the last few years have shown, this could’ve been a lot weirder.
Let’s hear it for the girls
A majority of the artists nominated for the Big Four awards are women, including seven each in Album, Record, and Song of the Year. (They include SZA, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Victoria Monét, Dua Lipa, Janelle Monáe, Lana Del Rey, and the three women of boygenius.) In other words: Only one male artist, Jon Batiste, was nominated for each of those awards. Nearly all of those women rank among the year’s most nominated too, along with six-time undercard nominee Brandy Clark. It’s not a perfect group (still looking fairly white), and I wouldn’t put it past the Grammys to still give Jon Batiste a trophy or two instead in the generals. But it’s worth something.
SZA does it all
You don’t become the top Grammy nominee without conquering a few genre fields first. This year, SZA earned a year-best nine nods behind SOS by branching out from R&B into Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (for “Ghost in the Machine” with Phoebe Bridgers) and Best Melodic Rap Performance (for “Low”). All told, she earned nominations for five separate songs, including “Kill Bill” (ROTY, SOTY, Best R&B Performance), “Snooze” (Best R&B Song), and “Love Language” (Best Traditional R&B Performance). Though sadly, “F2F” did not get a rock nomination.
Phoebe Bridgers one-ups her boygenius bandmates
Speaking of SZA, that’s who Phoebe Bridgers has to thank for being the second-most-nominated artist of the year. On top of a strong six nods for boygenius, Bridgers shares in that Best Pop Duo/Group Performance nomination for “Ghost in the Machine.” Still, it’s an exciting day for all three members of her supergroup, with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus earning their first-ever Grammy nominations.
The Grammys still aren’t over Jon Batiste
Two years after his surprise win for Album of the Year, Jon Batiste has officially reached Grammy-darling status. (Hope he enjoys the special pre-show party with H.E.R. and Brandi Carlile.) He’s up for six more awards this year — much fewer than his record 11 in 2022, but still showing up where it matters. That includes another Album of the Year nod for his genre-busting World Music Radio, Record of the Year for “Worship,” Song of the Year for “Butterfly,” and genre nominations in pop, American roots, and jazz. Even without the Soul score boosting his nominations or his Late Show gig boosting his visibility, Batiste hasn’t lost much favor with the Academy.
Morgan Wallen’s and Luke Combs’s hits don’t hit.
A banner year for country on the charts isn’t necessarily going to lead to awards hardware. Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony Music never stood much of a chance for “Try That in a Small Town” and “Rich Men North of Richmond.” But it’s more than a little surprising that neither Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” or Luke Combs’s “Fast Car” cover cracked Record and Song of the Year. In fact, of the 12 longest-running Hot 100 No. 1s, Wallen’s is one of only three to not get a ROTY nod (along with Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind 1997” and Los del Rio’s “Macarena”), and the only one with 16-plus weeks at No. 1. Combs ended up receiving one nod in Best Country Solo Performance, while Wallen’s “Last Night” was nominated for Best Country Song (but since he wasn’t a credited writer, Wallen doesn’t share in that). On one level, this means the Academy just doesn’t like Wallen and Combs as much as Nashville does. More broadly, it’s yet another sign of country’s waning power in the top categories, especially at a post-committee Grammys.
Like a jaguar, Victoria Monét attacked the nominations
The Academy loves to see a songwriter stepping into the spotlight. This year, they rallied around R&B performer Victoria Monét (whose resume includes Ariana Grande and Chloe x Halle), nominating her for seven awards as a solo artist, including Record of the Year and Best New Artist. It makes sense that Monét’s deft channeling of throwback R&B and soul would play well with an Academy that loves its classics, but this is an especially strong swell of support.
K-pop still isn’t popping
It’s hardly surprising anymore, but the Grammys once again declined to nominate any K-pop music. Perennial snubs BTS may be on hiatus, but multiple members earned solo hits, including Jungkook and Latto’s “Seven” and Jimin’s “Like Crazy.” And the lot of missing artists gets wider every year, with Stray Kids and Tomorrow X Together continuing to come into their own and NewJeans entering as one of the scene’s freshest new voices.
Miley Cyrus finally gets her flowers
Before today, Miley Cyrus had just one solo Grammy nomination from nearly a decade ago, for Bangerz in Best Pop Vocal Album. But not even the Academy could ignore “Flowers,” one of the few genuine pop hits in a year that felt like a drought. Cyrus racked up six nods, in the generals and pop categories. If Swift fatigue sets in, she could even be a top alternate in Record or Song of the Year.
Barbie is everywhere — except Album of the Year
If Barbie were an individual artist, she would’ve led the nominees with 11. The songs off Barbie The Album drastically overperformed: two slipped into Song of the Year (“What Was I Made For?” and “Dance the Night”), Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj’s “Barbie World” picked up a rap nod, Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” cracked Best Music Video, and four were nominated for Best Song Written for Visual Media. So with all those nominations, why isn’t Barbie The Album in AOTY? Maybe it was just a strong year for albums otherwise, or maybe the campaign needed an individual face behind the album (like Kendrick Lamar for Black Panther or T Bone Burnett for O Brother, Where Art Thou?).
Billie Eilish can do this in her sleep
Even in an off year, the Academy’s favorite Gen-Z singer-songwriter can hang with the best, logging six nominations, mostly behind her Barbie song “What Was I Made For?” Can she outdo herself when she drops her next album?
Olivia Rodrigo rocks
Guts is a textbook sophomore success at the Grammys, earning six nominations after Rodrigo’s Best New Artist win two years ago. She was even able to crack a new category: Best Rock Song for the bucket of fun that is “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl.” Guess she really didn’t need to think of a third line.
Is PinkPantheress too weird for the Academy?
I had my doubts about “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” slipping into Record or Song of the Year. Even if the Academy liked Ice Spice, as it seems to, the song felt a bit too progressive (too short, too electronic, too young) for the general field. Still, I figured PinkPantheress would be a shoo-in for Best New Artist, and maybe a Best Pop Duo/Group Performance nod for one of the year’s more interesting hits. Instead, she came up empty-handed. At least she can celebrate her debut album, Heaven knows, out today — and see if she has better luck submitting that next year.
Rap finds some balance. Rock could learn from it.
The rap field is looking more modern than it has in years, with nominations for 21 Savage, Metro Boomin, Lil Uzi Vert, Ice Spice, Travis Scott, and Doja Cat. But the Academy still threw in a few for the old heads, nominating Killer Mike, Black Thought, and voters’ inexplicable new favorite, Nas. (One nominee even bridges both: Coi Leray’s “Players,” in Best Rap Performance, which flips Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message.”) Meanwhile, aside from boygenius and Rodrigo, the rock category continues to look pretty stale. Yeah, those Foo Fighters, Metallica, and Queens of the Stone Age albums rock, but so did the albums by dozens of younger, more exciting artists like Wednesday or Geese. Also, both fields continue to share one glaring issue: a gender imbalance. Women don’t make up a majority of the nominees in any single category.
A quiet year for reggaeton
The Best Música Urbana Album category is looking a little empty with just three nominations, for Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito, Rauw Alejandro’s Saturno, and Tainy’s Data. Per the Academy, this is because the category received fewer than 40 submissions — this after a banner year where Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti cracked AOTY. It’s a bit of a disappointment for a category that had just been heating up. (One bright spot in the Latin field, though: Peso Pluma, one of the biggest hits out of the Música Mexicana boom, is up for Best Música Mexicana Album.)
Producer of the Year doesn’t look much different in the general field
This ceremony will be the first where everybody in the Recording Academy gets to vote for Producer and Songwriter of the Year. So far, things look pretty similar. Three of the five POTY nominees have been there before: two-time winner Jack Antonoff, D’Mile, and Hit-Boy. The other two, Metro Boomin and Daniel Nigro, had flashy, well-respected projects this year. It’s harder to say anything broad about Songwriter of the Year in the award’s second year, but it feels notable that one of the writers works primarily in Spanish (Edgar Barrera) and two come from the country field (Jessie Jo Dillon and Shane McAnally).
Who the fuck is Robert Glasper?
Whoever he is, he’s nominated against Chris Brown yet again in Best R&B Performance.
Remember H.E.R.?
Since H.E.R. stole the Academy’s hearts in 2019, the R&B singer-songwriter has been nominated for awards every year until now. But don’t call it a snub — she had just one song eligible, her NBA-finals anthem “The Journey.”
Is “A&W” the first SOTY nominee to use the word “whore”?
Sorry, Recording Academy, for ever doubting you.
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