Nominations for the 65th annual Grammy Awards were announced Tuesday morning, with Beyoncé leading the field with nine nods, Kendrick Lamar close behind with eight, and Adele and Brandi Carlile tied with seven. Four contenders enter the race with six nominations apiece: Future, Harry Styles, Mary J. Blige, DJ Khaled and Randy Merrill.
It’s a field in which there are few of the major surprises that have marked other Grammy nominations rollouts in recent years — either in terms of bad surprises, like the shutout for the Weeknd two years ago, or good ones, like Jon Batiste dominating the field last year.
Instead, the nominations generally went largely as predicted, with Beyoncé, Adele, Styles, Lamar and Lizzo being the five contenders who were each nominated in the top three all-genre catories: record, album and song of the year.
Among the artists who did better than predicted in those top categories are Mary J. Blige and ABBA, who both got put up for record of the year and album of the year, but not song. For Blige, it has been 16 years since she last landed nods for record and album.
The currently very hot Steve Lacy also landed in two of those three categories, being put into contention for both record and song for the recently chart-topping “Bad Habit.”
Latin music did not have the breakthrough presence in the general categories that some expected. Bad Bunny was nominated for what many consider the top prize, album of the year, for his blockbuster “Un Verano Sin Ti,” something few other non-English-language albums have accomplished since the Grammys began in the 1950s. That was the good news; the bad news was that Bad Bunny landed only two nominations in all. There was also some thought that Rosalía might make it into one of the top categories, but that was not to be, as she landed just one nod, for best music film. Anitta did make it into the best new artist field, as expected.
It was not a landmark year for country music in the nominations, either, for that matter. Not a single country artist made it into the top four general categories. The controversial Morgan Wallen was shut out, despite being one of the two commercially biggest artists during the nominating period, along with Bad Bunny. Zach Bryan, one of the great breakouts of 2022, was limited to one nomination — and it was not best new artist, something for which he was almost universally predicted to be a shoo-in for a nod.
Other artists to contend in the top three categories are Taylor Swift (whose “All Too Well (10-Minute Version” is nominated for song of the year), Doja Cat (up for the single “Woman” after her smash album was in the mix last year), Coldplay, DJ Khaled, Gayle and, making a surprise return, ‘90s Grammy queen Bonnie Raitt.
Gayle, surprisingly, did not field any further nominations beyond her song of the year nod for
“abcdefu.” She was left out of the best new artist category, which includes such expected names as Anitta, Omar Apollo, Latto, Muni Long, Maneskin and Wet Leg and the less predictable ones Domi & JD Beck, Samara Joy, Molly Tuttle and Tobe Nwigwe.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Variety