Andre 3000 shocks, Ariana Grande underperforms, and other Grammy snubs and surprises
Grammy nominations morning was Friday, November 8, and the top categories included many of the expected favorites as well as a few surprise inclusions and omissions. Check out the list of nominations here.
For starters, you might have noticed that Ariana Grande received three nominations, but she’s nowhere to be found in the general field. “Eternal Sunshine” was snubbed for Album of the Year, while her chart-topping single “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)” was snubbed everywhere; it didn’t even receive a bid for Best Pop Solo Performance, where Grande has been nominated before.
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So it wasn’t the best news for her, but she fared a lot better than Vampire Weekend, the alternative band that Gold Derby’s odds were predicting to be nominated for Album of the Year for “Only God Was Above Us.” They were completely blanked, though, with not even a nom for Best Alternative Album. Elsewhere, Benson Boone managed just a single nomination for Best New Artist; we thought he’d get into Song of the Year too for his mega hit “Beautiful Things,” but that breakthrough single couldn’t break through anywhere.
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There was also no Hozier on the nominations list despite achieving his first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Too Sweet.” He was nominated a decade ago for Song of the Year for “Take Me to Church,” but he still hasn’t been nominated since then. Dua Lipa is nowhere to be found either. We weren’t expecting her to show up in the general field, but she also failed to receive genre nominations too for her now ironically titled album “Radical Optimism.” So Grande’s three pop bids aren’t looking too bad after all.
But the Grammys giveth in addition to taking away. Arguably the biggest surprise of the morning was Andre 3000‘s instrumental album “New Blue Sun” landing in the Album of the Year race. He previously won Album of the Year for “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” as a member of the rap duo OutKast, but this was a drastic departure for him. Jacob Collier‘s “Djesse Vol. 4” also unexpectedly made the cut in that top category, though he didn’t surprise us nearly as much as he did the last time he was nominated; this time around he ranked a respectable 11th in our odds.
Meanwhile, Charli XCX exceeded expectations with seven total noms. We had anticipated her bid for Album of the Year for “Brat,” but she also cracked the Record of the Year lineup with “360,” as well as Best Pop Solo Performance for “Apple” and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Guess” with Billie Eilish. And let’s not forget that out-of-nowhere nom for Khruangbin; they were so unexpected they weren’t even in our predictions center. What did you think of the artists who made it in — and the ones who didn’t?
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