Grammys
Life After Death: What Are the Posthumous Grammy Odds For Rap’s Lost Stars?
Hip-hop lost three of its brightest voices in the past year — but thanks to recent posthumous albums, their presence could still be felt on Grammy night. One of the most moving moments of February’s Grammy ceremony came during the pretelecast, when best rap performance was awarded to “Racks in the Middle,” led by the late Nipsey Hussle, who had been killed in a March 2019 shooting. The award was accepted by his family, including his grandmother Margaret Boutte. Wearing sunglasses, she thanked those in attendance for “showing all the love that I have felt for [Nipsey] all of his life.” Powerful moments like that could well take center stage on the main telecast at the next ceremony. Over the past few years, a number of hip-hop’s leading artists have died — many of whom still had recorded mu...
The GRAMMY Museum is Launching Its Own Streaming Service
The GRAMMY Museum is set to launch its own dedicated streaming service featuring artist interviews, performances, and livestreams. Titled COLLECTION:live, the service will host an estimated 1,000 programs upon launch with a mix of both new and notable archival content. The organization has foreseen a pivot to streaming in their future for quite some time in order to connect with a younger digital audience. According to the museum’s President Michael Sticka, those plans rose to top priority status in the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Since March, the organization has accelerated its pace to record new virtual content including interviews with Billie Eilish and FINNEAS and a conversation with Hans Zimmer on the making of “No Time to Die,” which will be avai...
Taylor Swift Has Already Won Two Grammys for Album of the Year. Could She Win a Third? Should She?
If Swift wins album of the year for a third time, she would join a Grammy Mount Rushmore that consists of Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Taylor Swift is a Grammy magnet. She has won 10 awards, including two for album of the year. She has lost album of the year just once (when she was a nominee). Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories took the 2013 award, beating Red. So the Nominations Review Committee, which determines the final nominations in the Big Four categories—album, record and song of the year plus best new artist—has to know that if Swift’s current album, Folklore, is nominated for album of the year, it may very well win. Swift has demonstrated broad voter appeal—to both pop and country fans, older and younger members. Swift would make history if she won. She’d be the j...
Lewis Capaldi, Passed Over for a Grammy Nod for Best New Artist, Lands His 2nd Top 10 Hit on the Billboard Hot 100
Capaldi was also bypassed for a performance slot on the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards on Jan. 26. Lewis Capaldi is having the last laugh. Nearly nine months after the Scottish singer/songwriter was, surprisingly, passed over for a Grammy nod for best new artist, he lands his second top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Before You Go.” The song follows “Someone You Loved,” which led the chart for three nonconsecutive weeks last November—and received a Grammy nod for song of the year. (Capaldi co-wrote the ballad with Tom Barnes, Pete Kelleher, Benjamin Kohn and Sam Roman.) Nominations in the Big Four categories—album, record and song of the year plus best new artist—are determined by a nominations review committee which reviews the top 20 vote-getters of rank-and-file voting members. While ...
Will the Grammys Classify Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ as Pop or Alternative?
Last week, we asked whether Taylor Swift’s new album Folklore would put her back in the album of the year finals at the Grammys for the first time since she won for 1989. Most of you seem to think it will. Here’s a tougher follow-up question: Will the album compete for best pop vocal album, as Swift’s last three albums have, or best alternative music album? (Albums may compete in only one “genre album” category.) Unfortunately, we can’t just go by the charts: The album enters both the all-genre Billboard 200 and Alternative Albums at No. 1 this week. The album has strong alternative credentials. Aaron Dessner, who co-produced the album with Swift and her long-time collaborator Jack Antonoff, and who co-wrote nine songs on the album with Swift, won a Grammy in the alternative ca...
YG Details Guns Being Drawn On Him & His Family During Police Raid
Source: Rich Fury/Getty Images / Rich Fury/Getty Images YG is opening up about his frightening encounter with the police during his recent arrest in Los Angeles days before he was scheduled to perform at the Grammys in January. Earlier this week during his interview with online radio show, The Morning Hustle, YG touched on the incident, revealing that while he was being arrested the police not only had their guns drawn on him but the entire family that was with him at the time. “Around the Grammys, the police raided my house while I was there with my family and my kids,” YG recalled. “They came at like four in the morning when everyone was still sleep, they had the helicopter going around and everything so I hopped up to see what was going on. So I open the door and boom they draw down on ...
Grammy.com Readers Are Split About the Grammys’ New ‘Progressive R&B’ Category Name
Response was about evenly divided between the one positive response and the other two, which were negative or neutral. The Grammys announced on June 10 that they were changing the name of their best urban contemporary album category to best progressive R&B album. Most observers welcomed the change. “Urban” was the buzzword in R&B for a number of years, but many now see the term as dated and perhaps racially insensitive. On June 5, Republic Records announced that it was banning the term. The name change was fair-game for a quickie poll, including this one which turned up in an unexpected place—the Recording Academy’s own site, Grammy.com: “What do you think about the Best Progressive R&B Album category name change?” The tartly-phrased choices: It’s a step in the right...
The 2009 Emmy Awards Experiment That Reshaped Award Shows
The trend at award shows these days as far as the number of nominees in marquee categories is go big or go home. The Emmy Awards bucked 60 years of tradition when they announced the nominees for the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards on July 16, 2009. They unveiled seven nominees for each of what are widely seen as their top awards—outstanding comedy series and outstanding drama series. They had usually had five nominees in each of these categories. Six and a half months later, on Feb. 2, 2010, the Oscars took it even further when they announced the nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards. They unveiled 10 nominees for their flagship award, best picture, up from the usual five. They announced 10 nominees the following year as well. The Tony Awards have a much smaller field of potential nominee...
17 Women Are Among the Recording Academy’s 40 Trustees on Newly Constituted Board
The number of women on the Recording Academy’s 40-member board of trustees jumped from 14 to 17 following the recent trustees elections, which included, for the first time in academy history, four “at large” trustee seats. In three of those four two-person contests, two women faced off, ensuring that a female would fill that seat. Trustees are primarily selected by the governors of each of the academy’s 12 chapters. This year, for the first time, voting members selected the winners in four “at large” trustee seats. In those elections, Chelsey Green defeated Maimouna Youssef; Natalia Ramirez bested Sarah Hudson; Carolyn Malachi outpolled Kelly Price; and, in the one all-male face-off, PJ Morton beat Camilo Landau. In addition to Green, Ramirez and Malachi, three other female trustees were n...
Tim McGraw Shares Touching Performance of ‘Something Like That’ for ‘United We Sing’ Special: Watch
Tim McGraw stripped it down for his performance on Sunday night’s (June 21) United We Sing: A Grammy Salute to the Unsung Heroes. During the two-hour special honoring essential workers, the country superstar delivered a touching acoustic rendition of “Something Like That,” lifted from his Grammy-nominated 1999 album A Place in the Sun. Harry Connick Jr. hosted the special event on CBS, which also featured performances from Jon Batiste, Andra Day, John Fogerty, Jamie Foxx, Herbie Hancock, Cyndi Lauper, Little Big Town, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Dave Matthews, Trombone Shorty and more. United We Sing supports charities that benefit underserved children, including No Kid Hungry and the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans, as well as the MusiCares COV...
What the 2021 Grammys Could Look Like
With a confirmed date for the 2021 ceremony, the Recording Academy is now focused on pandemic-proofing the show. The show will go on. That’s the word from Recording Academy chair and interim president/CEO Harvey Mason Jr. about the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, slated to take place Jan. 31, 2021. Less certain, in the age of the coronavirus, are all of the other particulars, including whether the ceremony will air live from Los Angeles’ Staples Center as planned. Mason says he is in “constant communication” with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office, medical advisers, network partner CBS, the venue and executive producer Ben Winston regarding the latest updates that inform the reopening process. California is currently in stage two — and concert venues in the state do not reopen until ...
Grammy, Emmy, Golden Globes Sites Commemorate Black Out Tuesday
Both the Grammy and Emmy sites urged visitors to support Color of Change and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The lead stories at the sites tied to the Grammy Awards and the Emmy Awards on Tuesday (June 2) didn’t have anything to with awards or nominations, but with social justice. Visitors to www.Grammy.com were greeted with this announcement, set against a stark black background: “The Recording Academy stands with our members, colleagues, creators and the entire music community as we observe ‘Black Out Tuesday’ on June 2. We will use this day to reflect, as we know we can all be better…do better. “We recognize and embrace the responsibility that we all have in the fight against racial injustice. The Academy will join our colleagues in the music industry t...
