This year the iconic Grammy Awards are being held in Los Angeles, California on February 4th. The night will be hosted, once again, by comedian Trevor Noah, and the venue will be packed with all the biggest names in the music industry today. Though the Grammys are often unpredictable, it’s always fun to celebrate and root for your favorite artists.
While the Grammy Awards can be a career-making night for certain artists, producers, and lyricists, we also want to recognize this season’s surprises and snubs regarding the nominations. Overall, a big surprise this year was the outstanding representation of females in the industry. When looking through the award categories there is an abundance of female-dominated genres and nominees. Leading the pack is American singer and songwriter SZA with nine separate nominations for her new album SOS Another surprise this year was up-and-coming artist Victoria Monét: Monét is the only best new artist nominee who is additionally nominated in one of the big four categories (Record of the Year). Lastly, a surprise no one would have expected is the comeback of singer and songwriter Miley Cyrus. Cyrus has been off the grid for a bit, but has slowly made her resurgence. This year her album Endless Summer Vacation has been nominated for Record, Album, and Song of the Year, a surprise few expected.
While the night will be rewarding for some, others have felt as if there are artists snubbed out of awards that they deserve. Country singer and songwriter Morgan Wallen is top of the charts, but he has yet to receive a single nomination for any of his music so far. Many fans feel the country genre is severely underrepresented, as there are very limited nominations for country songs, artists, and albums outside of the general Best Country… categories. We would love to see more nominations and wins for the country genre in the coming years. Similarly, Latin music has not received the recognition it deserves from the academy this year. Last year, artist Bad Bunny made history with the first nomination for a Latin album in the Album of the Year category. Although he did not take home the award, the nomination represented a win for the Latin community. Many thought the academy was making headway in its Latin representation but were surprised to find out the academy snubbed both Karol G and Peso Pluma this award season. Fans felt Karol G deserved a nod for album of the year with her album Mañana Será Bonito being nominated for Best Música Urbana Album and were additionally surprised when Pluma didn’t receive a Best New Artist nod despite him being nominated for Best Música Mexicana album. Finally, many fans noticed the extremely high number of awards for the music from the Barbie movie. While this is an amazing accomplishment in its own right, it brings into question why Barbie: The Album did not receive a nod for Album of the Year with 11 nominations from the album.
Album of the Year is one of the biggest and most anticipated awards of the night. Last year, the academy created a unique way of celebrating each album nominated. Throughout the night clips were shown of fans praising each respective album. When it came time for the presentation of the award these fans were brought up and announced the winner (Harry’s House Harry Styles). We think this made the award so much more special and memorable and would love to see it again this year. Overall, the nominations this year feature a mix of different genres, fan bases, and styles. Although, there is one stand-out commonality that’s hard to ignore. Other than artist Jon Batiste, the entire category for Album of the Year is monopolized by female artists. This is an amazing nod and win for females within the industry as well as being deserved by all the nominees.
The category of Best New Artist is a great way to celebrate underdogs in the music industry for their newest work while also generating even more publicity for them in the future. This year the nominees are Gracie Abrams, Fred again.., Ice Spice, Jelly Roll, Coco Jones, Noah Kahan, Victoria Monét, and The War and Treaty. We believe that one of the joys of this award is celebrating not only underrepresented artists but also underrepresented genres. Last year’s winner Samara Joy came from a Jazz and Gospel background which is not something that you see all the time in the media. However, this award seems to be very hit or miss when it comes to this diversity with very prominent artists from prominent genres winning in the past such as Olivia Rodrigo in 2022 and Billie Eilish in 2020, being from a primarily pop scene. While Spice seems to be the most probable bet, if we were going to go for a more shadowed category, we would choose either Abrams or Kahan to shine some light on the indie/folk genre.
Song of the Year is also one of the most anticipated categories of the big night. This award is, again, very female-dominated this year with all but one of the songs by female artists. All of the nominees this year are very neck-and-neck when it comes to popularity and overall success. In other words, it has been nearly impossible to avoid these songs no matter how hard you try. Another surprise when it comes to this category specifically was that two of these songs were written for Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” movie and both of them, “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa and “What Was I Made For” by Billie Eilish, have a very big chance of winning. It is also important to note that nominees including Lana Del Rey and Miley Cyrus have never won a Grammy despite being nominated many times making it hard not to root for them.
One of the biggest privileges in the music industry is getting the opportunity to perform at the Grammy Awards. This year the performers include Burna Boy, Billie Eilish, Billy Joel, Dua Lipa, Joni Mitchell, Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, Travis Scott, SZA, and U2. Though some of these artists are returning entertainers, Burna Boy is making history by not only performing for his first time but also being the first afro-fusion performer in Grammy history. Last year, Harry Styles performed before winning the most prestigious Grammy Award, Album of the Year, so hopefully it will provide some luck for both SZA and Rodrigo as they are up for the same award.