2022’s Grammy nominations: A resurgence of the oldies
“Tony Bennett might want to thank the Recording Academy for getting rid of its nominations review committees,” said Paul Grein in Billboard. Together with his duet partner, Lady Gaga, the 95-year-old crooner has been named a Grammy finalist for Record of the Year and Album of the Year—honors that the duo’s Cole Porter tribute album might not have achieved if the Academy was still using the committees that have served as gatekeepers since 1995. That year, gatekeeping had seemed like a smart response after Bennett’s MTV Unplugged performance won Album of the Year and helped fuel talk that the Academy was out of step with young listeners. But earlier this year, R&B superstar the Weeknd put the screening panels on the defensive when he boycotted the 2021 awards event and blamed the panels for denying his topselling album even a single nomination. For January’s awards show, the Academy let all 11,000 members choose the nominees. That group put Bennett back in contention—alongside Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, and 18-yearold Olivia Rodrigo.
Another recent rules tweak had a similar effect, said Ben Sisario and Joe Coscarelli in
The New York Times. Just a day before announcing this year’s nominees, the Academy decided that the nominee list for each of the top categories would expand from eight to 10. Though the move was presented as a way to celebrate more new artists, internal documents revealed that the expansion had instead let recent Grammy stalwarts Taylor Swift and Kanye West slip into the Album of the Year competition. In the Record of the Year category, the extra two slots provided a first-ever Grammy nomination for ABBA, the hitmakers from Sweden who peaked in the 1970s. Yes, there are popular newer artists represented in the top categories, including Rodrigo, Eilish, and Doja Cat. But Grammy voters can’t seem to help favoring older acts or artists rooted in old traditions, such as this year’s most nominated artist: jazz pianist and Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste. In certain categories, the return of the tried and true “can’t help but feel like regression.”