2023 GRAMMYs Nominations: Snubs & Surprises
This morning, the Recording Academy revealed the nominations for the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. Beyoncé leads the nominations tally with a staggering 9 nominations and expected names like Adele, Harry Styles, Bad Bunny, Lizzo, and Taylor Swift appear across the list multiple times. Here are the biggest shocks and the sweetest surprises of this year’s nominations announcement.
SURPRISE: Mary J. Blige Overperforms
From co-headlining the 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show to launching her fourteenth solo studio album to raves from critics and fans alike, Mary J. Blige has had a banner year. The “Family Affair” singer was expected to pick up nominations across the R&B field, but she also scored coveted nods in Album and Record of the Year for Good Morning Gorgeous and its title track. Anytime we can see our veterans celebrated for their current work, we should cherish it.
SNUB: Megan Thee Stallion
After winning three awards back in 2021 and picking up an additional nomination in 2022 for Best Rap Performance (“Thot Shit”), Megan Thee Stallion came up short for this year’s show. It’s a bit of a head-scratcher considering how weak this year was for the rap field. Traumazine should have been able to squeeze into Rap Album, and “Plan B” was outright snubbed for Best Rap Performance. Not sure what happened there.
SURPRISE: ABBA Continues Domination
Last year, to the surprise of virtually everyone, ABBA scored their first career Grammy nomination with a Record of the Year nod for “I Still Have Faith In You.” This year, they continued their love affair with the Grammys, picking up additional nominations for Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, and Record of the Year. As one of the most important and influential acts in music history, it’s nice to see them finally get their due from the Academy.
SNUB: Summer Walker, Ari Lennox, Ravyn Lenae
Despite strong showings from Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, and Jazmine Sullivan, this year wasn’t so hot for the younger class of women in R&B. Summer Walker (Still Over It), Ari Lennox (age/sex/location), and Ravyn Lenae (Hypnos) were all unjustly shut out of the nominations this year. With both commercial success and critical acclaim on their side, a grand total of zero nominations between these three artists is a travesty.
SURPRISE: Country Underperforms In General Field
Zach Bryan (American Heartbreak), Maren Morris (“Circles Around This Town”), BRELAND, and Lainey Wilson were expected to inject some country flavor into the General Field, but all three missed out on the Big 4 categories. Country music seems to have finally found its footing in the streaming era and regained its ability to scale the highest heights of the Hot 100, yet the genre’s most recent commercial and critical success was not reflected in this year’s nominations.
SNUB: The Global Music Categories Aren’t Doing Enough
Thankfully, Burna Boy’s “Last Last” made its way into Best Global Music Performance, but where were Pheelz & BNXN fka Buju’s “Finesse” or Kizz Daniel & Tekno’s “Buga (Lo Lo Lo)?” As a matter of fact, how did “Last Last” miss out on a Record of the Year nomination? This year was just further proof that we need a proper Afrobeats field, a restructuring of the “global music” categories, and more fearlessness when it comes to recognizing works performed in non-English languages in the General Field.
SURPRISE: GloRilla
GloRilla has been on a hot streak for all of 2022 so far, and she isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Less than a week after releasing her debut EP, GloRilla picked up her first career Grammy nomination for Best Rap Performance with her anthemic “F.N.F.” GloRilla represents a different style of rap and performance compared to her peers such as Latto or Flo Milli, so it’s nice to see female rappers with different sounds and personas continue to be recognized by the Academy.
