Will the Grammy Awards be a Grande affair?
Ariana has a compelling narrative but so does Pink, Swift
LOS ANGELES — While album of the year is the most prestigious Grammy award and also the most confusing (witness Herbie Hancock’s The Joni Letters defeating Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black in 2008), best pop vocal album, in comparison, tends to be mainstream and populist. In other words, it’s the category where Grammy voters seem to be more swayed by commercial than critical success. In recent years, the contenders usually have been mostly well known and current, with no Herbie Hancocks or Tony Bennetts hogging the sentimental vote.
For the second consecutive Grammys, none of the best pop vocal album nominees are up for album of the year, a reflection less on the quality of the nominees than of the Record Academy’s recent efforts to be more inclusive in the major categories.
Female artists often dominate the contest, and this year, it’s five against one. Will the women cancel each other out, leading to a Shawn Mendes victory for his eponymous third album? That album actually has a lot going for it. A commercial and critical success on its release last May, it’s also the only nominee to have scored a nod in one of the three big categories. The first single, In My Blood, is up for song of the year. Mendes’ biggest hurdle may be the lack of an irresistible narrative: As a 20-year-old up for his first two Grammys, he’s hardly overdue.
His friend and I Know What You Did Last Summer duet partner Camila Cabello, however, has a couple of strong narratives. The ex-member of Fifth Harmony pulled off a pop rarity with Camila — she left a successful group and became an even bigger star on her own — and her song Havana, one of the most ubiquitous hits of 2018, was shunned by the major categories. Still, she faces some stiff competition.
Pink’s nod for Beautiful Trauma feels mostly like force of habit. She’s had four nominations in the category, second only to Kelly Clarkson, and still no wins. This year, she occupies the overdue-veteran slot with her seventh album and first in five years. Pink has won three career Grammys but only one for her solo work, so “overdue” is part of the storyline here — although the album’s first single, What About Us, nabbed a best solo pop performance nod last Grammy cycle, which might make the album feel too 2017.
Kelly Clarkson, whose two wins in this category are matched only by Adele, has been releasing albums almost as long as Pink has, so she has veteran’s cred, too. But Meaning of Life was Clarkson’s first album not to go at least gold.
Of the three vets in the running, Taylor Swift enjoyed the most commercial success with Reputation, and its predecessor, 1989, also won in this category. However, Grammy voters may feel as if they’ve rewarded Swift enough over the years and decide to spread the love by handing this award to Ariana Grande for her fourth album, 2018’s Sweetener.
The 26-year-old singer has yet to win a Grammy and her narrative is powerful, to put it mildly. It includes the 2017 bombing at her concert at the U.K.’s Manchester Arena, the drug-overdose death of her ex Mac Miller last September, and her recent high-profile breakup with SNL star Pete Davidson, but it also includes a triumphant No. 1 album and a string of recent blockbuster singles — and Thank U, Next, her fifth album, is dropping the Friday before the Grammys, just a few months after the release of Sweetener.
Despite all that, she scored just a pair of pop category nominations this time around with no big nods, so a victory here seems likely. At the very least, it could be a dress rehearsal for 2020. On the basis of the songs she’s released from Thank U, Next so far, 2020 nods for album of the year, record of the year and song of the year seem likely.
It’s a good thing she’s now used to saying Thank U.