This year’s Grammy nominations are out, which offers me an exciting opportunity to take a look at a questionable amalgamation of nominees in categories that never quite line up. But who doesn’t love award shows!
This year, Kendrick Lamar leads the pack with a total of nine nominations including record and song of the year for “luther” and album of the year for “GNX” among others.
Here are my thoughts on a few of the categories, along with my favorite choice from each.
Best New Artist
Every year, the “Best New Artist” category proves itself to be one of the most bizarre of them all. It’s a category that frequently sees artists who have been present in the space for years matched up against whoever has the biggest TikTok hits. This time around, the nominees include:
Olivia Dean, who has seen notable success on social media, especially with the virality of her recent hit “Man I Need”.
KATSEYE, the unbelievably viral girl group known for their K-pop inspired sound and their GAP ad which many perceived as a clap back to the controversial Sydney Sweeney “Great jeans” American Eagle ad.
The Marias, a group that has now been releasing music for 8 years but recently had their big break with the release of their 2024 album “Submarine” and, once again, a huge viral hit with “No One Noticed”.
Now, if you had told me a few years ago that two Hype House members would be nominated in the same year for the “Best New Artist” category at the Grammys, I would have rolled my eyes (and likely would have assumed the worst… that Lil Huddy’s music was seeing large amounts of radio play).
Turns out, I am still half disgusted by these nominations. On one hand, Addison Rae has formulated a brand new it-girl image for herself, a big deal of which can be attributed to Charli xcx’s co-sign, which allowed a more widespread population to accept that maybe Addison was always this cool and artsy, regardless of her TikTok dancing past. None of this is to discredit her work however, as her debut album “Addison” served up a hearty serving of fun, campy, and slightly off-kilter pop tracks.
On the other hand, there is Alex Warren, an unforgivably uninteresting artist who manages to make Benson Boone sound unique. Within the nauseatingly over-dramatized sweeping choruses of “Ordinary,” Warren managed to land himself a great deal of mainstream radio play. Unfortunately.
Leon Thomas has come a long way from his “Victorious” days, coming off of a grammy win for his songwriting on SZA’s “Snooze”, he now finds himself nominated for “Best New Artist” and a handful of other awards including “Best R&B Album” and “Best R&B Performance”.
Sombr and Lola Young had big years on TikTok catapulted by the success of “back to friends” and the similar launch into fame that occurred with Young’s hit track “Messy”.
My Pick: The Marias
Best Album Cover
The newest category at the Grammys provided nominations for Tyler, The Creator’s “Chromakopia”, Djo’s “The Crux”, Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos”, Perfume Genius’ “Glory”, and Wet Leg’s “moisturizer”.
Image courtesy of Grammy.com
Album art is such an impactful piece of the process of music consumption and finally seeing nominations for the artists who put so much hard work into these covers is a huge step in the right direction.
My Pick: “moisturizer”
Album of The Year
This year’s album of the year nominations include Bad Bunny’s “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS”, Justin Bieber’s “SWAG”, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Man’s Best Friend”, Clipse’s “Let God Sort Em Out”, Lady Gaga’s “MAYHEM”, Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX”, Leon Thomas’ “Mutt”, and Tyler, The Creator’s “CHROMAKOPIA”
These nominations mostly play it safe, after all, it’s the Grammys. However, the nomination of three hip-hop albums alongside the second all spanish album ever nominated for the “Album of The Year” category (following Bad Bunny’s 2022 album “Un Verano Sin Ti”) might indicate a desire to be perceived as more progressive.
However, if they truly want to be seen as the progressive, music-loving institution they’re starting to pretend to be, they should probably stop showing so much love for the insipid works of Jelly Roll and Teddy Swims, who managed to earn themselves three and one nomination, respectively.
My Pick: GNX
Song of The Year
Now this is a category where you would expect to see this year’s biggest anthems, those unavoidable hits that truly stopped the world in its tracks.
However, these nominations put me to sleep.
Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra”, Doechii’s “Anxiety”, ROSÉ & Bruno Mars’ “APT”. Bad Bunny’s “DtMF” Golden From “KPop Demon Hunters” by HUNTR/X:EJAE, Audrey Nuna, REI AMI, Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “luther”, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild”, Billie Eilish’s WILDFLOWER are all up for song of the year at this years Grammy’s.
Billie Eilish snagged her annual Grammy nomination and Kendrick Lamar racks up another chance to win in this category.
My Pick: Luther
These Grammy selections, as they do every year, manage to leave out so many of the most interesting and impactful musical moments. Of course I have my own personal biases, and not all of these works were submitted for consideration, but projects like Bon Iver’s “SABLE, fABLE”, Cameron Winter’s “Heavy Metal”, Samia’s “Bloodless”, Dijon’s “Baby”, and Lorde’s “Virgin”, deserve far more love than they received.