Kendrick Lamar and Drake lead the pack of nominees, women are well represented in the big categories, and where are Taylor Swift and Kanye West.
Maybe this is the year Kendrick Lamar finally wins a Grammy for record, album or song of the year. His work on the soundtrack for “Black Panther” landed him eight nominations on Friday, the most of any single artist.
Or maybe it’s the Year of the Women, with the nominations in those categories as well as best new artist tilted heavily toward in their favor a year after men dominated the nominations in the Big 4 categories.
Nominations for the 61st Annual Grammy Awards were announced on Friday and as usual there’s plenty to talk about in the mix of those who get to attend the ceremonies on Feb. 10,2019 at Staples Center in Los Angeles and those who get to stay home this year and cry pretty.
Here’s what jumped out after a bit of scrutiny of the nominations.
1. Powerful Women: Female artists dominated several of the top categories. For album of the year, they grabbed five of newly-expanded-to-eight nominations with Cardi B, Brandi Carlile, H. E. R., Janelle Monae and Kacey Musgraves against male artists Drake, Post Malone and Lamar. Women are also part of five of the eight nominations for record of the year and four of eight for song of the year. And in best new artist, female acts grabbed six of eight slots with Chloe x Halle, H. E. R., Dua Lipa, Margo Price, Bebe Rexha and Jorja Smith against Greta Van Fleet, a band of guys with the name of a woman, and Luke Combs.
2. Kendrick Lamar’s Superpower: The hip-hop star from Compton now has 37 Grammy nominations for his career, and while he’s won 12 out of 29 opportunities in years past, those wins have all been outside of the top awards, usually in various rap categories.
