Beyoncé and Taylor Swift lead the 2021 Grammy nominees
Kenya
0
Beyoncé didn’t release an album this year, but she still picked up nine Grammy nominations.
BET Awards 2020/Getty Images
The Grammy nominees are here. The Recording Academy has announced the full list of nominations for the 2021 edition of the annual ceremony, because no matter how unusual and unpredictable 2020 has been, there’s still been plenty of popular art made that’s worthy of celebration.

The Recording Academy revealed the nominations in more than 80 categories — including the top honors of Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist — during an hour-long live stream show on November 24. The live stream featured such musical greats as Gayle King and Sharon Osbourne (as well as Imogen Heap and Dua Lipa, two-time Grammy winners themselves).
Beyoncé leads the 2021 nominations with nine total nods, despite not releasing an album containing new music during the eligibility period of September 1, 2019, to August 31, 2020. She has two different songs competing in the Record of the Year category: The first is Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” in which Bey is a featured guest.
The second is “Black Parade,” her joyous celebration of Blackness; “Black Parade” also won recognition in the Song of the Year category. Beyoncé released “Black Parade” ahead of her latest visual album, Black Is King, a Disney+ exclusive that is stunning in its scope and direction. Black Is King picked up a few noms in categories dedicated to visual media, bolstering Beyoncé’s nomination count.
Among others in the running for the top awards this year are Dua Lipa, for her fantastically danceable record Future Nostalgia; Haim, whose excellent, long-gestating Women in Music Part III was accompanied by some amazing music videos; and Taylor Swift. Swift reenters the Grammys’ major categories after the awards passed over her previous two releases, winning back critical favor for her return-to-form, surprise-release record Folklore. Lipa and Swift also picked up awards in the Song and Record of the Year categories, along with several others.
This critic is perhaps most stoked about Fiona Apple’s Grammy nominations — and, in some cases, disappointed about her lack thereof. Fiona Apple shouldn’t be a surprising pick for nods; she’s been nominated for eight Grammys across her 24-year career. But Fetch the Bolt Cutters was a confrontational, transformative work for the artist, and perhaps the greatest album of 2020 thus far.
Released at the height of the pandemic in April, Fetch the Bolt Cutters spoke powerfully to both the anxiety of the current moment and the hopelessness that defined many other moments in the seven years since Apple’s previous album release — including Me Too, a troubling administration in the White House, and institutionalized racism. All of these themes were filtered through Apple’s gorgeous vocals and intimate lyrics and provocative instrumentation. It’s somehow both an utter joy and an utter devastation of an album. While Apple picked up nominations in the rock and alternative music categories, she was shut out of Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year.
More delightful are the multiple nods for Phoebe Bridgers, including in the Best New Artist race. That category is a misnomer as ever, as Bridgers has released a nearly unending stream of phenomenal work throughout the last five years. But an artist can only qualify as Best New Artist once they have made a commercial breakthrough that “establishes the public identity of that artist,” according to the Recording Academy, which sounds fairly subjective. For those of us who have loved artists like Bridgers for a while now, this comes as comically overdue.
Bridgers’s fellow Best New Artist nominee Megan Thee Stallion has also been around for quite some time, although she made the news several times in 2020 for a shocking shooting injury, a shockingly horny collab with Cardi B, and a shockingly powerful Saturday Night Live performance; her remix of “Savage” (featuring Beyoncé) picked up nods Record of the Year and Song of the Year as well. (Megan appeared during the Recording Academy’s live nominee announcement show, where she was told on-camera that she had been nominated for several awards. Her reaction was adorable.)
#GrammyNominations #WhatsHotOnBuzz #InfluencerOnBoombuzz #beyonce #somethingtowatch
BET Awards 2020/Getty Images
The Grammy nominees are here. The Recording Academy has announced the full list of nominations for the 2021 edition of the annual ceremony, because no matter how unusual and unpredictable 2020 has been, there’s still been plenty of popular art made that’s worthy of celebration.

The Recording Academy revealed the nominations in more than 80 categories — including the top honors of Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist — during an hour-long live stream show on November 24. The live stream featured such musical greats as Gayle King and Sharon Osbourne (as well as Imogen Heap and Dua Lipa, two-time Grammy winners themselves).
Beyoncé leads the 2021 nominations with nine total nods, despite not releasing an album containing new music during the eligibility period of September 1, 2019, to August 31, 2020. She has two different songs competing in the Record of the Year category: The first is Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” in which Bey is a featured guest.
The second is “Black Parade,” her joyous celebration of Blackness; “Black Parade” also won recognition in the Song of the Year category. Beyoncé released “Black Parade” ahead of her latest visual album, Black Is King, a Disney+ exclusive that is stunning in its scope and direction. Black Is King picked up a few noms in categories dedicated to visual media, bolstering Beyoncé’s nomination count.
Among others in the running for the top awards this year are Dua Lipa, for her fantastically danceable record Future Nostalgia; Haim, whose excellent, long-gestating Women in Music Part III was accompanied by some amazing music videos; and Taylor Swift. Swift reenters the Grammys’ major categories after the awards passed over her previous two releases, winning back critical favor for her return-to-form, surprise-release record Folklore. Lipa and Swift also picked up awards in the Song and Record of the Year categories, along with several others.
This critic is perhaps most stoked about Fiona Apple’s Grammy nominations — and, in some cases, disappointed about her lack thereof. Fiona Apple shouldn’t be a surprising pick for nods; she’s been nominated for eight Grammys across her 24-year career. But Fetch the Bolt Cutters was a confrontational, transformative work for the artist, and perhaps the greatest album of 2020 thus far.
Released at the height of the pandemic in April, Fetch the Bolt Cutters spoke powerfully to both the anxiety of the current moment and the hopelessness that defined many other moments in the seven years since Apple’s previous album release — including Me Too, a troubling administration in the White House, and institutionalized racism. All of these themes were filtered through Apple’s gorgeous vocals and intimate lyrics and provocative instrumentation. It’s somehow both an utter joy and an utter devastation of an album. While Apple picked up nominations in the rock and alternative music categories, she was shut out of Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year.
More delightful are the multiple nods for Phoebe Bridgers, including in the Best New Artist race. That category is a misnomer as ever, as Bridgers has released a nearly unending stream of phenomenal work throughout the last five years. But an artist can only qualify as Best New Artist once they have made a commercial breakthrough that “establishes the public identity of that artist,” according to the Recording Academy, which sounds fairly subjective. For those of us who have loved artists like Bridgers for a while now, this comes as comically overdue.
Bridgers’s fellow Best New Artist nominee Megan Thee Stallion has also been around for quite some time, although she made the news several times in 2020 for a shocking shooting injury, a shockingly horny collab with Cardi B, and a shockingly powerful Saturday Night Live performance; her remix of “Savage” (featuring Beyoncé) picked up nods Record of the Year and Song of the Year as well. (Megan appeared during the Recording Academy’s live nominee announcement show, where she was told on-camera that she had been nominated for several awards. Her reaction was adorable.)
#GrammyNominations #WhatsHotOnBuzz #InfluencerOnBoombuzz #beyonce #somethingtowatch
Comments (0)
0/500
New Comments（0）
What do you think of this post?
