Innovations and surprises in the list of Grammy nominees

The 66th Recording Academy Awards will be held on February 4, 2024 at the Los Angeles Sports Complex, which was called the Staples Center until 2021 and is now called the Crypto.com Arena. The leader in the number of nominations was rapper SZA. Talks about expected and unexpected decisions of academicians Igor Gavrilov.

The 66th Grammy Awards will honor songs and albums released between October 1, 2022 and September 15, 2023. Thus, for example, the song “Angry” by The Rolling Stones, released on September 6, was nominated, and “Now and Then” by The Beatles will await its award fate next year.

The names of the nominees were announced during a broadcast on the Recording Academy’s online resources. In addition to the head of the academy, Harvey Mason Jr., the ceremony to announce the nominees was attended by Vince Gill, Samara Joy, Money Long, Kim Petras, St. Vincent, Al Yankovic and Jon Bon Jovi, who has already won the MusiCares Person of the Year award this Grammy season for his achievements in providing medical care to musicians in need. The final round of voting, during which the winners will be determined, will take place from December 14 to January 4, 2024. According to the Academy, about 16 thousand applications were submitted for the Grammy Award. More than 11 thousand members of the Recording Academy take part in the voting.

The biggest sensation of this Grammy season is that women have a significant lead in the Record of the Year and Album of the Year categories.

Six of the eight Grammy nominees in each are women. The fair sex is, in principle, leading the list this year. SZA (Solana Imani Rowe, pronounced Siza) with nine nominations is followed by folk singer Phoebe Bridgers, who has seven nominations. Among the performers with six nominations, only two men are Jon Batiste and Jack Antonoff, the others are Brandy Clark, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and the Boygenius trio featuring the same Phoebe Bridgers.

No one was able to get into the four main Grammy nominations at once – Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year and Best New Artist. Three of the Big Four nominations include Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, SZA, Olivia Rodrigo and Jon Batiste. Two of the four include Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish and Boygenius.

Even before the ceremony itself, Taylor Swift became the Grammy record holder. Swift’s song “Anti-Hero” became the seventh song of her career to be nominated. “Song of the year”.

According to this indicator, she surpassed Lionel Richie and Paul McCartney, who have six such songs. With his album “Midnights” in the nomination “Album of the Year” Swift tied with Barbra Streisand, who also appeared in this category six times. Only Streisand took 24 years to achieve this, and Swift 15 years.

Miley Cyrus and her father Billy Ray Cyrus became the third family in Grammy history to have their work appear in the category. “Record of the Year”. Previously, only Frank and Nancy Sinatra and Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie Cole succeeded. Billy Ray Cyrus received a Grammy in this category in 2020 for his duet with Lil Nez Ax “Old Town Road,” and Miley Cyrus was nominated for “Flowers,” an undisputed global hit of 2023.

There is one more remarkable fact that will attract the attention of those who have at least half an eye on the global film distribution in recent months: in the nomination “Best Song for Music Video” Four of the five works nominated for the award are from the Barbie film soundtrack, recorded by Mark Ronson and Andrew Watt.

In 2024, the Grammys will be awarded in three new categories in addition to those that have long become familiar.

The Academy’s greatest pride is its new nomination “Best African Music Performance”. It features mostly Nigerian artists who are already present on the world music scene to one degree or another. The most famous of them is pop singer Burna Boy.

In another new category, “Best Alternative Jazz Album”, features works by Louis Cole, Kurt Elling, Corey Henry and Meshell Ndegoechello, that is, characters long known to jazz music lovers. The only truly “alternative” release in this category is the album “Love in Exile” by Pakistani singer of Saudi origin Arouj Aftab. It’s not often that songs recorded in Urdu are nominated for the Grammys.

There is another nomination that did not exist before – “Best Pop Dance Recording”. The academy said in a statement that it will feature recordings that feature strong rhythms, heavy use of electronic instrumentation and an emphasis on vocal performance, melody and melodic hooks. The nomination mainly features the work of commercial EDM DJs such as Calvin Harris and David Guetta, as well as pop artists such as Kylie Minogue and Troye Sivan.

In nomination “Best Classic Collection” (“Best Classical Compendium”), among other things, the disc “Fandango” is presented with the participation of American violinist Ann Akiko Meyers and the famous conductor of Venezuelan origin Gustavo Dudamel. The producer of this recording was sound engineer Dmitry Lipai. His track record already includes five Grammys. Dmitry Lipai has lived in Seattle for a long time, and in the last century, in the 1990s, he worked with the Russian groups Aquarium and Trefoil.

As 2023 ends, the Recording Academy has deemed it necessary to make a separate statement on the hot topic of artificial intelligence.

Its essence, in short: only works created by people can be submitted for consideration, nominated for a Grammy, or receive an award. So far, AI infighting similar to the Hollywood film professionals’ strike is not visible in the music industry, but perhaps it is a matter of time.