Grammy Nominations 2018: Trends and Updates

Bruno Mars. Photo by Michael Buckner/Variety/REX/Shutterstock (8879639qb)

The nominations for the 60th Annual Grammy Awards were released yesterday. Surprisingly, the nominees are quite diverse and different from what everyone was expecting.

Men of color have topped many categories including Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar who have the highest number of nominations in the music category.

Jay-Z has secured a whooping 8 nominations while Kendrick has a total of 7 nominations. Bruno Mars with 6 and Childish Gambino with 5 nominations are not too far behind from their other singers.

For the very first time, a Spanish song – “Despacito” – has received a nomination for Song of the year as well as Record of the year. Also, for the very first time in the History of Grammy Awards, no white male singer got a nomination for the category of “Best Album of the Year”.

In the “Best New Artist” category, for a change, we see three talented women (Julia Michaels, SZA and Alessia Cara) and two African American men (Khalid and Lil Uzi Vert).

Taylor Swift was unable to secure a nominee for her singing but she received two for songwriting. Her songs “Better Man” and “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” are both nominated for the songwriter category.

Several Grammy Award favorites including Ed Sheeran and Post Malone are notably absent this year. Unfortunately, Harry Styles was also unable to grab a nomination this year.

It is believed that the newly introduced digital voting system is behind this diverse selection of nominees.

In his latest interview, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow talked about the nominations and said he was “very pleased.” He added that the nominees are “a wonderful reflection on our organization and how relevant and in touch and savvy our voting members are.”

Grammy Awards will air on January 28th, 2018 on CBS.