The 66th Annual Grammy Awards nominations were announced on Nov. 10, but it was observed that several of the year’s successful artists were excluded from the list.
For instance, Matty Healy, the lead singer of the alternative British rock band The 1975, expressed his outrage on the social media platform Instagram.
“The fact that we didn’t get nominated for a Grammy is a f*cking outrage,” Healy said.
Prince Harry’s audiobook was also noticeably missing despite selling 3.2 million copies worldwide.
This raised questions about the Grammys’ bias and relevance in the music industry. Addison White, a sophomore mass communication major, thinks the Grammys might be avoiding controversial artists and playing it safe.
“The 1975 had controversy not long ago, and Morgan Wallen also had his pretty recently,” White said. “While they both had very great years, I think that the Grammys want to play it safe and try just to choose artists they know haven’t had controversy lately. I don’t think that it’s fair.”
After the nominations were released, music magazine Billboard also took note of the lack of country music nominations with notable missing artists.
Wallen, one of America’s current top recording artists, has yet to receive a Grammy nomination in any category. His album “One Thing At A Time” topped Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart for 28 weeks.
His song “Last Night” was nominated for Best Country Song. However, he was not credited, as he did not write it.
After Luke Combs’s version of “Fast Car” won the Country Music Award, or CMA Award, for Single of the Year, it fell short in the Grammy nominations and was solely nominated for Best Country Solo Performance.
Laney Wilson, who has earned seven CMA Awards within the past two years, was eligible for the Grammys’ Best New Artist but did not receive a nomination. Her album “Bell Bottom Country” was passed over for Album of the Year but nominated for Best Country Album.
The way the Grammy nomination system works has raised concerns about the integrity of the board of voting members. The board comprises individuals heavily involved in the music industry who review applications sent in by artists and select nominees for different categories.
“The Grammys is known to be a rather flawed system,” said Kelsey Foster, a senior music therapy major. “The board of voting members are required to vote on categories they may not be well-exposed to. History shows a lack of diversity in the Grammys, and celebrities who win the award often acknowledge other artists in the category who they believe should have won.”
Artists such as SZA, with 12 nominations, and Taylor Swift, with six nominations, carried the leads for most nominations. The Best New Artist category featured promising new names like Noah Khan and Gracie Abrams.
Significant musicians, like Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and The Weekend, did not submit their work after publicly calling out the Grammys in recent years.
If the Grammys do not adapt, many fear they could face becoming irrelevant in the coming years.
