Better luck next year, BTS. But ABBA is in.
THEGrammy Awards aren’t fair. Neither is life. Chaos rules. Snubs will happen, and who’s to say where to lay blame? With the Recording Academy’s 11,000plus voters, a mysterious lot whose membership lacks transparency? Failed PR campaigns? God? All of the above?
Sound conspiratorial? Two words: The Weeknd. His glaring omission from last year’s nominations rankled both the artist and nearly everyone who pays attention to the Grammys, leading to the abolition of the so-called secret committees that could overrule the voting bloc.
For better or worse, no Weeknd-size whiffs disrupted the proceedings this year. Shoo-in artists and major pop figures, including Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish and H.E.R., landed multiple nods. Ditto Doja Cat, Lil Nas X and Brandi Carlile.
But this year’s nominations did come with the inevitable left-field surprises and snubs. Below, some of the most notable.
ABBA’S LONG GAME PAYS OFF.
Those who measure musical success through Grammy trophies might stop to ponder the plight of the Swedish quartet.
Bereft of a single Grammy nod despite its multi-decade run of worldwide smashes, the Eurovision-winning group somehow managed to survive the Recording Academy’s indifference and eke out a career. This month, the band released a new album, “Voyager,” preceded by September’s lead single, “I Still Have Faith in You,” just before the voting deadline. The strategy, if there was one, paid off with ABBA’s first-ever nomination: for “I Still Have Faith in You” as record of the year.
JUSTIN BIEBER’S DOES TOO.
Bieber is many things, but he’s seldom been accepted by the academy’s old guard as an Artist Worthy of Consideration. This year, though, Bieber’s eight nominations establish just that. His work appears in three of the four major categories: record of the year and song of the year for “Peaches,” and album of the year for “Justice (Triple Chucks Deluxe).” Bieber also landed pop solo performance for “Anyone,” pop duo/group performance (with Benny Blanco) for “Lonely,” as well as pop vocal album, R&B performance and music video.
SWIFTIES ARE NOT GONNA BE HAPPY.
It’s hard to feel sorry for Taylor Swift right now, given her very good year (and decade and
career). In March, she won album of the year for “Folklore,” and her re-recorded “Red (Taylor’s Version)” is the No. 1 LP in the country.
Still, a tiny violin doesn’t take up much space so let’s bust it out to acknowledge that despite all the acclaim, Swift received only one nod for the 2022 Grammys: Her soft, COVID-19 pandemic comforter “Evermore” is among the album of the year contenders, but that’s it. Still, she can rest easy knowing that, like perhaps only Beyoncé, her very absence is a kind of presence.
JON BATISTE SCORES 11 NODS.
Batiste is best known as the affable bandleader for CBS’ “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” The New Orleans-born pianist’s big laugh is instantly recognizable during the comedian’s monologue, and in jazz circles, he’s a respected player. But straight talk: He’s hardly torn up the pop charts or the critics’ lists. The versatile album for which he’s nominated, “We Are,” peaked at No. 86 on the Billboard 200 and dropped off the next week. “Freedom,” which is nominated for record of the year, has a paltry 5 million spins on Spotify. (By comparison, Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” recently surpassed 1 billion.)
Something about Batiste’s skills and approach, however, resonated with Grammy voters. In addition to the above, he’s nominated for traditional R&B performance, R&B album, improvised jazz solo, jazz instrumental album, American roots song and performance, score soundtrack for visual media, music video and contemporary classical composition.
AROOJ AFTAB NABS A BEST NEW ARTIST NOD.
Among the 10 nominees in the category are pop star Rodrigo, rapper Saweetie and producer-songwriter Finneas (who’s won eight Grammys with sister Eilish), each of whom was expected to earn academy kudos. Few were blindsided by seeing rappers Baby Keem or the Kid Laroi among the nominees; rising country singer Jimmie Allen’s nod also made sense. Which is to say, although varied in instrumentation, nine of the 10 acts released albums full of pop-structured songs in 2021, Glass Animals, Arlo Parks and Japanese Breakfast included.
And then there’s Aftab. Until Tuesday morning, the 36-year-old Brooklynbased singer and composer’s most prominent appearance had been on Barack Obama’s summer playlist.
She’s never performed on network television, and she issued her 2021 album, “Vulture Prince,” not through a major label but on the experimental label New Amsterdam.
Aftab was born in Saudi Arabia and raised there and in Pakistan. Her album “Vulture Prince” has garnered attention for its seven meditative, minimal works that draw inspiration from a free-flowing South Asian lyric poetry form known as ghazal.
The Berklee College of Music-trained Aftab combines stringed instruments, synthesizers and the occasional percussive accent with multi-tracked layers of her pitch-perfect voice, singing mostly in Urdu. Oddly, the work isn’t even nominated in the global music album category; rather, its song “Mohabbat” earned a global music performance nod.
COUNTRY MUSIC? MAYBE NEXT YEAR.
With each of the four major categories generating 10 nominees, 40 slots were in play. Of them, only one true-blue country artist, Jimmie Allen, earned a major nod. Voters slammed the stable doors on established stars, including Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton, Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris and Sturgill Simpson. (Whether Carlile makes country music in 2021 remains unresolved.)
That left Allen, a Delawarean by birth, to represent the genre via his best new artist nomination. He did so through his work on “Bettie James Gold Edition,” a beefed-up version of his “Bettie James” EP that features collaborations with artists including Nelly, Tim McGraw, Pitbull, Guyton and Monica.
DID SOMEBODY SAY KACEY MUSGRAVES?
The belle of the ball in 2019, when her sublime “Golden Hour” earned album of the year and country album Grammy Awards, Musgraves seemed a lock for a major nomination.
Alas, her post-divorce album “Star-Crossed” was mostly ignored by the academy, save nods for “Camera Roll,” in the country song and country solo performance categories. (The popleaning “Star-Crossed” was deemed ineligible for country album.)
BTS COMES UP SHORT … AGAIN.
Apparently 50 billion fans can be wrong, or at least more of them need to infiltrate the Recording Academy. Despite their worldwide dominance, the K-pop phenoms earned just one nomination, in the pop duo/group performance category, for “Butter.”
BLACK VOICES RUN THE TABLE FOR SPOKEN WORD ALBUM.
Among Grammy watchers, who gets nominated in this field has long been fodder for wonderment. The category has been part of the ceremony since its 1959 inception and has celebrated a banquet’s worth of boldface names: Dorothy Parker, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jim Morrison, John F. Kennedy, William Shatner, Flea, Tiffany Haddish and Neil deGrasse Tyson among them.
But this year, for the first time, all the nominees are Black: LeVar Burton for his sci-fi book “Aftermath,” Don Cheadle for his reading of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ “Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation,” poet and spoken word artist J. Ivy for “Catching Dreams: Live at Fort Knox Chicago,” Dave Chappelle and Amir Sulaiman for “8:46” and Obama for his reading of his memoir, “A Promised Land.”