Though Beyoncé fans may still be recovering, the Grammy Awards will return this Sunday. And before the nominations were announced late last year, members of the Beyhive weren't the only ones who seemed ready to abandon this stodgy awards show once and for all. The Grammys, to many, had become a yearly hate-watch, promising the doom of looking on helplessly as your fave was inevitably snubbed for yet another unremarkable U2 album.
But when 2017's nominations were announced this past November, something seemed different. Hip-hop superstar Kendrick Lamar and alt-R&B princess SZA were among the most recognized artists. Rapper-turned-psychedelic funk revivalist Childish Gambino, Spanish-language reggaeton smash "Despacito," and emo-rap pioneer Lil Uzi Vert were competing in major categories. Player of Instruments Ed Sheeran, meanwhile, whose wildly popular, wildly bland Divide ticks all the traditional Grammy Darling boxes, was snubbed for all the majors.
In fact, of all the nominees in the four top-tier awards, only two featured white lead artists and none could be classified as "rock," traits often favored by the Grammys despite their waning centrality in popular music, where hip-hop and its offspring reign supreme.
So the 2017 Grammy nominations invited a previously inconceivable question: are the Grammys woke?
The answer is: let's not get ahead of ourselves. This is still an institution lavishing attention on 48-year-old Jay-Z's ninth-best album. But this year's nominees certainly represent a more diverse, germane list than the Academy has produced in recent memory.
And the one thing you can always say about the Grammys is that they are happening, whether we like it or not. So let's dive into the nominees in the top four categories and explore who should win, who will win (spoiler alert: they're often not the same thing!), and some other fun facts ahead of this Sunday's show.
Record of the Year
What's It For? Grammy categories are often confoundingly opaque (best urban contemporary album, anyone?), and record of the year is the Academy's signature point of confusion. This award is given for the performance of a song, meaning everything about it—the production, the vocals, the engineering, the overall experience—besides the writing. The actual songwriting is, somewhat inexplicably, honored separately in the song-of-the-year category. Now, can one conceivably experience a song as "good" without inherently appreciating its writing? It's highly unlikely. But this is the Grammys, not a philosophy class. Making sense has absolutely nothing to do with it!
Last Year's Winner: Adele's uncanny Adele tribute song, "Hello"
This Year's Nominees: Childish Gambino's "Redbone," Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber's "Despacito," Jay-Z's "The Story of O.J.," Kendrick Lamar's "Humble," and Bruno Mars's "24K Magic"
Who Should Win? Tomes could be written about the endless, towering Jay-Z singles that should have won record of the year. And while "The Story of O.J." was certainly a poignant entry on Jay's 4:44, it was a minor song on what was, Grammy nominations notwithstanding, a decidedly minor album in this legendary hitmaker's career.
"24K Magic" is a fine Bruno Mars track, but it's also a sloppy-seconds take on Mars's superior "Uptown Funk," which won in this category two years ago. "Redbone" is a deliciously stirring fusion of psychedelia and contemporary R&B which fits snuggly with the Grammys' newfound cultural sensitivity (the chorus is literally "I stay woke!"), but it would be a huge stretch to call it the defining song of the year, and many voters may be only passively familiar with it.
That leaves "Despacito" and "Humble," two of 2017's biggest and best singles. "Humble," on which a generation-defining rapper deftly owned Top 40 radio without sacrificing a bit of his integrity or bite, should be the winner.
Who Will Win? "Despacito," and it's hard to be mad about it. Not only is this song impossible to hate, let alone ignore, but it also tied with Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's iconic "One Sweet Day" to become the longest-running No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100, ever. That's a record of the year, if I ever heard one.
Best New Artist
What's It For? The best-new-artist award goes to the best artist who made their first "breakthrough into the public consciousness and notably impacted the musical landscape" in the preceding year. Obviously the criteria isn't scientific, which explains why SZA, an artist who has been releasing music commercially for half a decade, is nominated this year.
Last Year's Winner: In one of the Grammys' rare bullseyes, the effervescent Chance the Rapper
This Year's Nominees: Alessia Cara, Khalid, Lil Uzi Vert, Julia Michaels, and SZA
Who Should Win? This is easy. SZA made one of 2017's most accomplished, stylish, and emotionally resonant albums with CTRL, a work which has only grown in stature since its release this summer. This year found the 27-year-old emerging, fully realized, at the vanguard of a generation of singer-songwriters who are exploring a truly genre-less future for popular music.
Who Will Win? This is a loaded category without a clear front-runner. Least likely to win is Lil Uzi Vert, known primarily for the nihilistic hit "XO Tour Llif3" and its chorus, the celebratory refrain "all my friends are dead!", both of which are not comfy fodder for the ultra-conservative Academy. Julia Michaels, a distinguished hitmaker for other artists, scaled the charts on her own accord with "Issues" but hasn't been able to effectively follow that success, so she's probably out. Khalid's arrival this year, while undeniable, also seems featherweight next to many others in the category. He hasn't fully exploded quite yet.
So that leaves SZA, whose tremendous critical acclaim probably weighs heavily with Grammy voters, and Alessia Cara. Cara had numerous hits this year and is the perfect brand of accessible elegance that the Grammys typically eat up while still being a woman of color. These factors provide the Academy with the highly cynical opportunity to fuse their old, stodgy tropes and their recent desire to appear diverse, which, while a little icky, gives Cara a slight edge.
Song of the Year
What's It For? This is the one for a song's actual songwriting.
Last Year's Winner: Why, Adele's "Hello," of course!
This Year's Nominees: Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber's "Despacito," Jay-Z's "4:44," Julia Michaels's "Issues," Logic featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid's "1-800-273-8255," and Bruno Mars's "That's What I Like"
Who Should Win? Amongst these nominees, it's hard to argue that any mattered even a fraction as much as "Despacito" did this year.
Who Will Win? "1-800-273-8255" is far more memorable for its noble message than as an actual piece of music. "Issues" is a lovely song and was certainly a hit, although a very slight one for this major accolade. "4:44" suffers the same fate as "The Story of O.J.": a good Jay-Z song which made very little tangible impact on the musical landscape this year, especially when stacked against the artist's prior achievements. "That's What I Like" is a burst of sunshine, a chart-topper, and certainly superior to "24K Magic," but Bruno will be cursed here again by having won for more indelible music in the past.
All that said, "Despacito" will take this one as well, becoming the first almost-entirely Spanish-language song to do so since the inaugural Grammy ceremony in 1959.
Album of the Year
What's It For? Finally. A straightforward category! Album of the year is awarded to the "best" "album" of "the year." Simple enough!
Last Year's Winner: BEYONC . . . . . Just kidding! Adele won, of course. And even she wanted to give the thing to Bey. This whole debacle is arguably the key reason Grammy voters made such a clear attempt to get their act together this year.
This Year's Nominees: Childish Gambino's Awaken, My Love!, Jay-Z's 4:44, Kendrick Lamar's Damn, Lorde's Melodrama, and Bruno Mars's 24K Magic
Who Should Win? Kendrick Lamar deserves this award in every sense of the word, not only because Damn is one of the best albums of the year, or one of the biggest-selling, or one of the most critically beloved, or because he's been nominated twice before in this category and should have won both times.
Damn should win because it touches on so many defining aspects of 2017, musical and otherwise: it's complex and minimalist, confrontational and hooky, all in equal measure. It makes you think and it makes you dance. It's exquisitely personal and unabashedly egalitarian; apropos of our times, yet completely timeless. Most important, Damn does all of this while being a joy to listen to. No artist has achieved this balance quite like Lamar this year and certainly none has done so while still making red-hot radio records. There might be a lot we'd like to forget about 2017, but Damn sure isn't one of them.
Who Will Win? Lorde's Medodrama is a breathtaking achievement: an intricate, cohesive, and candid coming-of-age exploration by one of pop's singular voices. Alas, it lacked the cultural saturation of her last album and received, strangely enough, only this single nomination in the biggest category of the year, a signal that Lorde lacks broad support from the Academy's voters.
It would be hard to say Mars's album wasn't huge (it's currently on its third Top 10 hit) and yet 24K Magic, an impeccably made and stupendously fun album, is a little lightweight for a category that typically rewards the appearance of Importance.
Awaken, My Love! was a breakthrough achievement for Childish Gambino, but its impact, as well Donald Glover's stature in popular music, feel fairly minor for such an award (then again, the Grammys have shocked us before). There's a chance Damn and 4:44 might split the rap vote, with voters likely rewarding Jay-Z for his entire body of work rather than this particular album, in which case Mars or Lorde could slip through.
But there's a vibe in the ether that everyone appears to understand: this is Kendrick's year.
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