The nominations for 2018 Grammys is here and the top four categories including Record of the Year and Album of the Year have finally acknowledged genres such as hip-hop in the age of streaming.
MusicMix
Implementing changes after last year’s Adele-Beyonce controversy, the Grammys are celebrating diversity with hip-hop taking center-stage.
The nominations for 2018 Grammys is here and the top four categories including Record of the Year and Album of the Year have finally acknowledged genres such as hip-hop in the age of streaming.
The reason why the nominations are so diverse is because this year the Grammys switched to online voting in a bid to make the process much more inclusive. As a result, the vote was “accessible” to 13,000 members.
Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow told Billboard that the nominations are “a wonderful reflection on our organization and how relevant and in touch and savvy our voting members are.”
Remember when Adele swept the Grammys for 25 while Beyonce, also nominated for Lemonade, lost out as a result? Adele addressed it in her acceptance speech and stated, “I can’t possibly accept this award, and I’m very humbled, and I’m very grateful and gracious, but the artist of my life is Beyoncé. And this album to me, the Lemonade album, was just so monumental, Beyoncé, so monumental, and so well thought out, and so beautiful and soul-baring, and we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us see.”
Anyway, back to the present, while Beyonce didn’t win, it looks like things are changing slowly but surely with Jay-Z leading from the front with eight nominations including Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Album of the Year. Kendrick Lamar, too, is following closely with seven nods and Bruno Mars is the third-most nominated artist with six nods.
The nomination of Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s ‘Despacito’ and Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone’ is being seen as an acknowledgment of the streaming age where both artists racked up huge figures.
The success of artists like Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars, and Childish Gambino also means that pop stars who have won major categories in the past are nowhere to be seen. Names such as Ed Sheeran have been restricted to genre categories. Sheeran is up for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo Performance. Katy Perry also lost out a spot with Lorde being the one pop-esque artist in the big four. Similarly, Kelly Clarkson, Keisha and Lady Gaga are also restricted to single-genre categories.
The late but forever great Chris Cornell and Leonard Cohen have picked up a nod in Best Rock Performance category but Linkin Park is nowhere to be seen.
Other major names to make the cut for Grammy nods include Bob Dylan, Coldplay, Lana Del Rey, Foo Fighters, Tony Bennett, The Rolling Stones, Queens of the Stone Age and Metallica.