BEST BETS FOR THE BIG FOUR

The Recording Academy’s bombshell announcement in April that it’s disbanding its nominations review committees means that, for the first time in 27 years, voting members will have the final say on the nominations in the Big Four categories.

The change makes the Grammy nominations even harder to predict than usual. That’s because the committee’s patterns — striving for gender, genre and racial diversity and generally steering clear of legacy, deceased and controversial artists in the Big Four categories — had become somewhat predictable. Still, early predictions remain an annual tradition. Here are the likely nominees in each of the four categories, followed by a handful of other Grammy hopefuls.