Beyoncé ties her husband Jay-Z for Grammy record with 9 nominations
LOS ANGELES — Beyoncé has propelled herself into the highest Grammy echelon: The star singer claimed a leading nine nominations Tuesday, making her tied — with her husband Jay-Z — as the most nominated music act in the history of the awards show.
Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” reeled in record and song of the year nominations, while “Renaissance” — which ventured into the world of dancehall music — netted an album of the year nod. With Jay-Z also earning five nods this year, each spouse now holds the record for the most-ever Grammy nominations at 88 apiece.
Kendrick Lamar came away with the second-most nominations, with eight. Adele and Brandi Carlile both received seven nods. Harry Styles, Mary J. Blige, Future, DJ Khaled, The-Dream and mastering engineer Randy Merrill each picked up six.
Nearly half of this year’s leading nominees — announced by the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, John Legend, Machine Gun Kelly and Smokey Robinson —are women and more than half are people of color, according to the recording academy. The ceremony will be held Feb. 5 in Los Angeles.
“This makes me feel very proud, but it makes me conscious of the fact that we have to maintain the work we have done,” said Harvey Mason Jr., the Recording Academy’s CEO. He said there have been strides in the peer-driven voting system and increased membership, but he still believes more progress can be made.
“This year, I’m pleased with the result and work the voters did,” he continued. “We have almost 13,000 voters now. It’s really important work. I’m pleased to think they spent the time listening to the music and evaluating. I think you see by the type of nominations that they are not only going for just popular music or music that has a lot of streams. It’s just music of high quality.”
The academy added a special song for social change and five new categories including songwriter of the year, which Harvey says will further help diversify the 65th edition of the annual awards.