The 2023 Grammys celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip hop with a truly star-studded, multi-generational medley of performances, including the Roots, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Jazzy Jeff, Salt N Pepa, Rakim, Public Enemy, Ice-T, Queen Latifah, Method Man, Big Boi, Missy Elliott, The LOX, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, Grandmaster Flash, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Nelly, Scarface, Lil Baby, GloRilla, Too $hort, Lil Uzi Vert, and others.

Beyoncé became the most decorated musician in Grammy history - with her win for the Best Dance/Electronic Music Album for 'Renaissance', she has now won 32 Grammys over the span of her career, CNBC reports. Viola Davis has become the 18th person to achieve the EGOT - winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award - by winning best audiobook for her autobiography 'Finding Me'. In other major awards, Harry Styles won Album of the year for 'Harry's House', Lizzo won Record of the year for 'About Damn Time', and Bonnie Raitt took home the Song of the year trophy for 'Just Like That'. Samara Joy was crowned Best new artist, Robert Glasper won Best R&B album for 'Black Radio III', Kendrick Lamar in both Best rap song and Best rap album categories with 'The Heart Part 5', and 'Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers', respectively. Ozzy Osbourne's 'Patient Number Nine', was named best rock album, while his song 'Degradation Rules' won best metal performance. British indie duo Wet Leg also received two awards - including best alternative album for 'Wet Leg' and best alternative song for their breakout single, 'Chaise Longue'. Meanwhile composer and violinist Stephanie Economou received the first ever Grammy for best video game soundtrack, recognising her work on 'Assassin's Creed: Dawn Of Ragnarok'. First Lady Jill Biden honored an “anthem” of the protests in Iran Sunday night, 'Baraye' by AcademicShervin Hajipour as she presented a new Grammy Award recognizing songs that address social change. See Grammys in pictures. Check out all the nominees and winners.

Who, what, when, where, why?????
February 03, 2023

Mixmag: Why do the Grammys get dance music so wrong?

"Any effort to demystify the Grammys voting process tends to raise more questions than it does answers. The Grammys’ definition of excellence in Dance/Electronic music is as it applies to voting members of the Academy, who are not necessarily experts in dance music. Their choices more often than not reflect tracks and albums that have sold well and/or gone viral on TikTok" - Mixmag tries to find out who actually decides the nominations and the winners in the Dance/Electronic field at the Grammys, and what determines a track or album’s eligibility.

The story behind the story
January 30, 2023

Interviews with Grammy nominees for best album notes

This week’s special edition of Music Journalism Insider is bringing interviews with nominees for the Grammy Award for Best Album Notes. MJI talked with four nominees - Gareth Murphy, who earned his nomination for the notes to the important Irish album 'Andy Irvine Paul Brady'; Fernando Gonzalez who is nominated for the notes to 'Astor Piazzolla: The American Clavé Recordings' about the tango master; Bob Mehr, the liner notes author for the important Wilco album 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'; Ted Olson who wrote liner notes for 'Doc’s World: Traditional Plus'.

Jon Batiste won album of the year for 'We Are', Silk Sonic won record and song of the year for 'Leave the Door Open' and Olivia Rodrigo walked away with best new artist ath the Grammy awards. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared mid-show to speak of Ukrainian musicians: "The war — what's more opposite than music? We defend our freedom. To live. To love. To sound. In our land, we are fighting Russia which brings horrible silence with their bombs. The dead silence. Fill the silence with your music! Fill it today. To tell our story. Tell the truth about war". Check out all the winners.

Some Grammy firsts and records this year. Mickey Guyton is now the first Black artist ever nominated for Best Country Album, for her record 'Remember Her Name', Tennessean reports. Jay-Z has become the most nominated artist in Grammy history, after getting three 2022 nods, which brought him up to 83 total, The Variety reports. Paul McCartney is second with 81, and Quincy Jones drops to #3 with his 80 nominations. See all the Grammy nominees.

Late night show with Jon Batiste
November 23, 2021

Jon Batiste leads Grammy nominations with 11 nods

Multi-genre performer and Oscar winner Jon Batiste scored the most Grammy nominations with 11 nods, including album of the year nod for 'We Are' along with record of the year with 'Freedom'. His nominations span several genres including R&B, jazz, American roots music, classical and music video. Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and H.E.R. each came away with eight nominations, whereas Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo both had seven nods. The Weeknd nabbed three nominations although the pop star claimed he would not allow his label to submit his music. Check out the nominees in all the categories here.

Check out the nominees in the top four categories:

Record of the Year

ABBA - 'I Still Have Faith in You'
Jon Batiste - 'Freedom'
Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga - 'I Get a Kick Out of You
Justin Bieber Featuring Daniel Cesar & Giveon - 'Peaches'
Brandi Carlile - 'Right on Time'
Doja Cat Featuring SZA - 'Kiss Me More'
Billie Eilish - 'Happier Than Ever'
Lil Nas X - 'Montero (Call Me by Your Name)'
Olivia Rodrigo - 'Drivers License'
Silk Sonic - 'Leave the Door Open'

Album of the Year

Jon Batiste - 'We Are'
Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga - 'Love for Sale'
Justin Bieber - 'Justice' (Triple Chucks Deluxe)
Doja Cat - 'Planet Her' (Deluxe)
Billie Eilish - 'Happier Than Ever'
H.E.R. - 'Back of My Mind'
Lil Nas X - 'Montero'
Olivia Rodrigo - 'Sour'
Taylor Swift - 'Evermore'
Kanye West - 'Donda'

Song of the Year

Ed Sheeran - 'Bad Habits'
Alicia Keys & Brandi Carlile - 'A Beautiful Noise'
Olivia Rodrigo - 'Drivers License'
H.E.R. - 'Fight for You'
Billie Eilish - 'Happier Than Ever'
Doja Cat Featuring SZA - 'Kiss Me More'
Silk Sonic - 'Leave the Door Open'
Lil Nas X - 'Montero (Call Me by Your Name)'
Justin Bieber Featuring Daniel Cesar & Giveon - 'Peaches'
Brandi Carlile - 'Right on Time'

Best New Artist

Arooj Aftab
Jimmie Allen
Baby Keem
Finneas
Glass Animals
Japanese Breakfast
The Kid Laroi
Arlo Parks
Olivia Rodrigo
Saweetie

The organisers of the Grammy Awards have scrapped their secret and anonymous voting committees following allegations of rigging, favouritism and racism, according to the New York Times. The Recording Academy voting members - which run into thousands - would instead select next year's nominations and winners. The Grammys voting procedure had been notoriously complex, with committees made up of 15-30 "highly-skilled music peers" having the final say in 72 categories. This meant they could overrule the votes of rank-and-file members. The Academy said it was also reducing the number of categories in which voters may vote, and adding two new award categories - Best Global Music Performance and Best Música Urbana Album.

The history is now
March 15, 2021

Taylor Swift and Beyonce make Grammy history

Taylor Swift has become the first woman in Grammy Awards history to win album of the year three times - the 31-year-old songstress took home the top prize last night with 'Folklore'. Swift previously won album of the year in 2010 for 'Fearless', at that time, the youngest artist ever to do so, and in 2016 for '1989'. The only other musicians to win thrice are Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra, and Paul Simon, USA Today reports. Beyoncé became the most-decorated woman in Grammys history with her 28th win, while her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, at 9 years old, became the second youngest person to win a Grammy, according to CBS News. Billie Eilish accepted the Grammy for Record of the Year for her song 'Everything I Wanted', Megan Thee Stallion won Best New Artist, H.E.R. took Song of the Year for 'I Can't Breathe', Check out all the nominees and winners here. BBC picks out five special moments from the ceremony, including Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion simulating sex onstage (a Scissor Sisters moment, right!?).

Fiona Apple / Thundercat / Kaytranada

Apart from the biggest categories, there were some noticeable wins at the Grammys last night. Kaytranada won Best Dance/Electronic Album with 'Bubba', Fiona Apple won Best Rock Performance with 'Shameika' as well as Best Alternative Music Album with 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters', Brittany Howard won Best Rock Song with 'Stay High', The Strokes won Best Rock Album with 'The New Abnormal', Thundercat won Best Progressive R&B Album with 'It Is What It Is', Gillian Welch & David Rawlings won Best Folk Album with 'All The Good Times', Burna Boy won Best Global Music Album with 'Twice As Tall', Body Count won Best Metal Performance with 'Bum-Rush', even Kanye West won, in Best Contemporary Christian Music Album category with 'Jesus is King', tying Jay-Z as the most ever Grammy-awarded among hip-hop artists with 22 awards.

The first award goes to - the Never-seen
March 14, 2021

This year's Grammys - handed out by bartenders and security guards

The 63rd Grammy Awards take place in Los Angeles on Sunday night, with performances from Billie Eilish, BTS, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and Cardi B - it's available to watch online (at 5 PM LA time, 1 PM Monday Berlin time, 9 AM Monday Tokyo time). This year's ceremony will have to audience, and performers will be separated onto five stages. The awards will be handed out by bartenders, security guards and cleaners from concert venues that have been forced to close because of Covid-19.

The Weeknd has said he will boycott future Grammy Awards after not being shortlisted for a single award this year, the New York Times reports. He said he would remain absent from the event until the Recording Academy, which organizes the awards, got rid of the "secret committees" that decide many of the nominations. The Grammys voting procedures are notoriously opaque, with review committees having the final say in 72 of the 83 categories. The anonymous panels, which can include musicians, record label staff and experts, review the initial choices of the Grammy voters and have the final say over who makes the shortlist.

Recording Academy has revealed the recipients of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awards - Talking Heads, Selena, Salt-N-Pepa, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, opera singer Marilyn Horne, and late jazz great Lionel Hampton will all receive the Special Merit gramophones, Variety reports.

Blue Ivy Carter has become one of the youngest Grammy nominees in history - the eight-year-old daughter of Beyoncé and Jay-Z was added to the nominees for best music video for her mother's 'Brown Skin Girl', People reports. Leah Peasall of The Peasall Sisters is the youngest Grammy nominee (and winner) as one of the credited artists on the 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' she was eight at the time. Deleon Richards is the youngest performer to receive an individual nomination - she was nominated at 8 1/2 years old for a 1985 award for best soul/gospel performance, female for her album 'Deleon'.

the Okee Dokee Brothers

"We can’t in good conscience benefit from a process that has—both this year and historically—so overlooked women, performers of colors, and most especially Black performers” - Alastair Moock & Friends, the Okee Dokee Brothers, and Dog on Fleas wrote to the Recording Academy asking to rescind their nominations for the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Children’s Music Album. Three of the five nominees say that "it is not an aberration” that all of the 2021 nominees are white and only one nominee is female, Pitchfork reports.

Haim

For the first time since its inception in 2012, the nominees for best rock performance at this year's Grammys are all-female or female-fronted: Fiona Apple, Big Thief, Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, Brittany Howard, and Grace Potter. Women also dominated the best country album category - it is the first time it has had five albums helmed in whole or in part by women: Little Big Town, Ingrid Andress, Brandy Clark, Miranda Lambert, and Ashley McBryde, Variety reports. And yet another precedent - South Korean megastars BTS became the first K-pop act to receive a Grammy nomination. The boy band’s latest hit single, 'Dynamite', is competing in the best pop duo/group performance category, CNN reports.

Beyoncé scored nine nominations for the Grammys, including song and record of the year bids with 'Black Parade', as well as best R&B song and best R&B performance, CBS reports. Beyoncé's 'Black Is King' film that highlighted Black art, music, history and fashion is up for best music film while 'Brown Skin Girl', a song dedicated to dark- and brown-skinned women, is nominated for best music video. Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and Roddy Ricch earned six nominations each. Check out the complete nominees list - here.

Nominothing
November 24, 2020

Grammy CD dies aged 25

The Recording Academy has called a halt to its annual 'Grammy Nominees' CD series after 25 years of featuring artists nominated for the American Academy award. Fifteen volumes in the annual series made the top 10 on the Billboard 200, with two volumes - in 2013 and 2014 - climbing as high as No. 2. The main franchise sold 9,8 million copies, with sales dwindling in recent years, Billboard reports.

World is not enough
November 03, 2020

Grammys change name of world music album category

American Recording Academy is changing the name of its best world music album category to best global music album, reflecting a change, rather an evolution in the world. The renamed Grammy will be announced on November 24 and given in February 2021. The Academy sees the new term as "a more relevant, modern, and inclusive", symbolizing "a departure from the connotations of colonialism, folk, and ‘non-American’ that the former term embodied while adapting to current listening trends and cultural evolution among the diverse communities it may represent”, Billboard reports. This year's Best World Music Album winner was Celia Angelique's 'Kidjo'.

John Legend made a provocative comment in the Entertainment Weekly about Grammy Awards, saying: “It’s almost impossible for a Black artist to win Album of the Year. How many years do we have to see Beyoncé snubbed? Kanye [West] has never won. It’s kind of insane…We’ve got to do something, because that’s a terrible record, and Diddy is right to complain about it”. Billboard double-checked Legend's claim. Of the 62 albums that have won album of the year, 12 – nearly 20% -- are by Black artists (as the lead artist). The most recent Black artist to win the album of the year, Herbie Hancock, won 12 years ago. Even if a Black artist wins when the 63rd annual Grammy Awards are presented on Jan. 31 - and The Weeknd and Lil Baby both appear to be strong candidates – that would be a 13-year gap between wins by Black artists – the longest such gap since Black artists starting win this award in the mid-‘70s.

Madame, what's your category again!?!
June 11, 2020

Grammys kick out "urban" in one category, add "urban" in another

Lizzo

The music world is in the middle of a process of kicking out the word "urban" as a denominator used to describe music of black origin, because, as Tyler, the Creator said, "urban" is “a politically correct way to say the N-word to me”. Grammys joined the trend, but it turned more than clumsy. A category formerly known as Best Urban Contemporary Album lost "urban" and became Best Progressive R&B, with Latin Pop Album becoming Best Latin Pop Or Urban Album. Vulture says these changes are just simply wrong - "rectifying these long-standing and persistent issues requires much more than switching a few words around, and thinking deeper than semantics... Until the Recording Academy takes stock of its house, the Grammys will remain a holistically damaged and toxic institution". NPR is much more direct - "On the surface, these seem like clumsy name changes... But their introduction points to larger, systemic issues for an organization that has long struggled to acknowledge and celebrate music made by artists of color".

FKA twigs and Usher

Usher, Sheila and FKA Twigs performed a Prince medley at the 62nd Annual Grammys - the trio performed (well, FKA twigs actually just pole-danced) 'Little Red Corvette', 'When Doves Cry', and 'Kiss'. The host Alicia Keys was joined on stage by Boyz II Men to pay an emotional tribute to Kobe Bryant, who died earlier the same day - the four performed the Motown classic 'It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday'. Tyler, the Creator, donning his signature "IGOR" look, was joined by Boyz II Men for his energetic performance 'Earfquake' and 'New Magic Wand'. Aerosmith went 30 years back and showed where the rap-meets-rock/metal came from, with performance of 'Walk This Way' with Run DMC.

Before we all fell asleep (or awoke), she wins it all
January 27, 2020

Billie Eilish sweeps the Grammys - becomes the first woman to win the big four awards in one night

Billie Eilish became the first woman in Grammy history to sweep the Big Four awards: album, record and song of the year plus best new artist. The first artist ever to win the big four awards was Christopher Cross 39 years ago. Eilish took album of the year for her debut, 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?', becoming the youngest album of the year winner in Grammy history (she is 18), easily topping Taylor Swift, who was 20 when she won a decade ago for 'Fearless'. She's also the youngest record of the year winner, with 'Bad Guy', in Grammy history - before her, the youngest were Kimbra and Sam Smith (both were 22 when they won). Also, Eilish's collaborator and older brother Finneas (22), is the youngest winner of producer of the year, non-classical in the category's history. Lizzo took best urban contemporary album for 'Cuz I Love You (Deluxe)', Tyler, the Creator's 'Igor' won best rap album, The Chemical Brothers' 'No Geography' won best dance/electronic album, Cage the Elephant took best rock album with 'Social Cues', Vampire Weekend took best alternative music album with 'Father of the Bride', the late Nipsey Hussle won his first Grammy for best rap performance for 'Racks in the Middle', Tool won best metal performance for '7empest', Beyoncé's 'Homecoming' won best music film, former First Lady Michelle Obama's 'Becoming' won best spoken word record...

StreamGram
January 24, 2020

Where to watch the Grammys

The 2020 Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, January 26th, in Los Angeles (starting at 5 PM local time). The ceremony will be streamed live on Grammy.com. Alicia Keys returns for her second go-around as host of the Grammys, confirmed Grammys 2020 performers include Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lizzo, Rosalía, Tyler the Creator, Jonas Brothers, and Demi Lovato. Aerosmith will team up with Run-DMC, and Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton will share the stage for the first time. There will also be a special tribute performance to Nipsey Hussle, featuring John Legend, Meek Mill, DJ Khaled, and Roddy Richh. Plus, Lil Nas X will join forces with BTS, Billy Ray Cyrus, Diplo, and Mason Ramsey for a performance as “Old Town Road All-Stars”. Camila Cabello will lead an all-star rendition of the Fame song 'I Sing the Body Electric' with Gary Clark Jr., John Legend, Common, Cyndi Lauper, Ben Platt, as “a tribute to longtime Grammy executive producer Ken Ehrlich to acknowledge the importance of music education in schools”.

Ride out in the country
January 24, 2020

Yola - from homelessness to Grammy nominations

British soul singer Yola grew up in poverty in Bristol, England, was discouraged from making music over concerns for the field’s financial instability, and was indeed homeless for a short while, but she didn't give up. As an adult, she fronted the country-soul band Phantom Limb, toured with Massive Attack, worked behind the scenes as a session singer, and then in 2016 her big break came - she made her debut at Nashville’s AmericanaFest with a rapturously received set. Footage of her performance reached producer Dan Auerbach, who soon got in touch about collaborating and ultimately co-wrote almost every song on her debut album 'Walk Through Fire'. It got four Grammy nominations, including nods for best new artist and best Americana album, and it got her some new friends - “It’s really normal for me to get a text from Brandi Carlile or Sheryl Crow,” says Yola - “This was not normal eight months ago”.

Rigging academy
January 22, 2020

Former Grammy chief - the awards are fixed

YouTube screenshot

Recently hired then fired American Recording Academy chief Deborah Dugan had filed a complaint against the organization stating that the nominating processes are fixed and accuses Grammy bosses of insider dealing and corruption. She says the board frequently nominates artists who aren't on the 20-deep list the Academy's members and expert committees propose for nomination, to reward "artists with whom they have personal or business relationships". Also, she says the Board manipulates the nominations process to ensure that certain songs or albums are nominated.

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