Grammys
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As two of the music industry’s most in-demand studio engineers, Serban Ghenea and his son Alex Ghenea are accustomed to being grilled about their signature techniques, as if making a hit record is about following some mysterious magic recipe.
The truth, says Serban, 54, is both simpler and a bit more complicated than that. “It always comes down to what the artist is looking for, or the producer, and how to get there. And that means a lot of different things for different artists.”
It’s reasonable enough to think the Gheneas have some secret sauce. With a credit list that spans the mightiest voices in pop past and present — including Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Adele, Bruno Mars and Justin Timberlake — and a staggering 19 Grammy Awards, Serban is one of the most prolific engineers in the world.
Alex, 28, has been a rising star ever since he remixed Adam Lambert’s “Better Than I Know Myself” in 2012 at age 15; since then, he has amassed a résumé of blockbuster credits with the likes of Ariana Grande, Khalid, blackbear, P!nk, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez.
These days, the Gheneas — who take on projects independently, though they informally weigh in on each other’s work — both are based at MixStar Studios, a private facility in Virginia Beach, Va., operated by Serban and Grammy-winning engineer John Hanes. Recent MixStar projects include The Rolling Stones’ “Angry” (mixed by Serban) and Halsey and Suga’s “Lilith (Diablo IV Anthem)” (remixed by Alex).
At this year’s Grammys, the two have eight nominations between them — including competing nods (two for Serban, one for Alex) in the new best pop dance recording category. That’s already cause for celebration for the duo, who are characteristically humble when considering the possibility of both father and son taking home trophies. “We’ll figure that out if that happens,” Serban says. “I don’t want to jinx it.”
Alex, you grew up in the studio, watching your dad. Serban, what did you think when he started to express an interest in the work?
Serban Ghenea: From way back in the day, I would check my mixes in the car, listen to what I was working on the day before. It’s part of the process. He was in a car seat, and he’d be sitting there, listening, and asking, “What’s that sound?” And I’d be, “Oh, that’s a triangle.”
And he was interested in music. He played drums; he started playing early. By the time he was 16, I got him Logic and a Mac, just to learn to mess with it. I didn’t expect much, but next thing I know, I come in one day and he’s working on something that sounded familiar.
Alex Ghenea: A Demi Lovato song.
Serban: Yeah, “Skyscraper.” He found an a cappella [recording] online and built a whole new track around it, just with Logic. I was like, “Holy sh-t, what are you doing?” He said, “I’m just playing around.” I said, “Here, listen to these songs and see if you can figure out how they make them and try to re-create it.” And so, he did a remix. I never explained how to do that, and never expected it. We sent it over to Disney —
Alex: It led to an Adam Lambert remix.
Serban: That opened the door for him doing a ton of remixes.
Alex: I think I was about 15 years old.
Did your dad have to explain to you that this wasn’t the typical career trajectory?
Alex: When I was a kid, I remember specifically, he said, “Forget about music; you should go study business or go be a lawyer,” and I actually ended up going to business school and studying marketing and I married a lawyer. So, I kind of took his advice.
Serban: He was on a path of doing remixes, and he was collaborating with a bunch of different people. Then, when COVID-19 happened, he was living in Los Angeles, and he came back [to Virginia Beach] that March and then the lockdown happened. He never went back to L.A. A lot of people that he was working with were writers; he would do the demos and rough mixes. So, when he was here, he just started to do that work, and it turned into mixing. And then, next thing you know, he was doing… What was the first big one?
Alex: [Blackbear’s] “hot girl bummer” with Andrew Goldstein, whom I’d met many years prior, during a writing-producing phase when I was living out in L.A.
Serban, in what ways have you passed your craft on to Alex?
Serban: The technical part of it he kind of just absorbed, being around and seeing it being done. I’d let him pick apart sessions and look at how things were put together. And I mean, anyone can learn that. The hard part is the aesthetic and trying to figure out what you should do. What do you like? What do you think people like? What do you react to? You only get that through experience and through listening.
Alex: Some of that early advice he gave me was, “Listen to a lot of music. Listen to stuff you like, listen to stuff you don’t like, listen to new stuff, old stuff.” You have to have a very wide palette of things to reference when you’re working on all sorts of songs and genres.
How much do you work together in the studio?
Alex: We don’t specifically work together, but now we’re sometimes on the same albums. Like with Tove Lo [Dirt Femme], I did a good bit, and he did some. Troye Sivan [Something To Give Each Other], that was about half and half. So, we’re working on the same projects, but it’s more of, I’d say, a collaborative thing. If I’m working on something and I’m like, “I think I’m at a good stopping point,” or, “I don’t know where to go next,” it might be cool to go play it for my dad.
Serban: We have the same manager, but Alex has his own clients. I have my own clients.
Alex: The biggest collaboration is probably figuring out what we’re eating for lunch at the studio.
Serban and Alex Ghenea have extensive mixing resumes — including shared clients like Ariana Grande, P!nk and Halsey.
blackbear: Gilbert Flores for Variety. Bruno Mars: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images. Cardi B: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images. Cyrus: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images. Francis: Sela Shiloni. Grande: Trae Patton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images. Halsey: Samir Hussein/WireImage. Jepsen: Jasmine Safaeian. P!nk: Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/Getty Images. Rapp: Santiago Felipe/Getty Images. Swift: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images. Surfaces: Stefan Kohli. Swims: Steve Granitz/FilmMagic. The Weeknd: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.
How do you balance serving someone’s vision with stretching yourselves creatively?
Serban: It’s so different now than it was when I first started mixing on a console. People are very attached by the time it’s approved and ready for us to mix; the direction of the record is kind of set. You can’t go crazy and take it off the rails, so you need to figure out, like Alex said, what needs to be improved. What do you not want to mess with, because you don’t want to break it?
Every song’s got its own signature thing that makes it unique and attractive. Sometimes it’s a little riff; sometimes it’s the way the whole beat feels. Or there’s a melodic thing in there, or the sound of the vocal, or sometimes it’s all of the above. But, at the end of the day, you’re just trying to facilitate and help get it across the line depending on what [the artist is] looking to do.
Serban, you have seven Grammy nominations this year, and Alex, you’re nominated for the first time. What does that mean to you?
Serban: Back in the day, I was a guitar player. My perspective was always, “Wouldn’t it be cool to do something as a musician and get a Grammy?” I never thought I’d be doing what I’m doing now. It’s the highest level of recognition. It never gets old. It’s hard to describe, but it’s definitely an exciting and appreciative feeling, because so many amazing musicians don’t get the opportunity.
Alex: I remember at age 16 or 17, being able to go with my dad and see the whole thing and watch him win a few. Being around all the musicians and producers and seeing what that world is like, I remember always wanting to be a part of it, thinking, “Man, I hope one day I get to be up on the stage, or at least have a shot at being nominated.” To actually see that come to fruition is pretty humbling.
You’re up against each other for best pop dance recording — Serban for Bebe Rexha and David Guetta’s “One in a Million” and David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” and Alex for Troye Sivan’s “Rush.” How does that feel?
Serban: Well, I hope he wins.
Alex: Just to be up there with [nominees] Calvin Harris and Kylie Minogue and all that, that’s already a win.
Serban: Yeah, the Grammy itself is not the end goal. It’s a nice recognition and pat on the back and makes you realize that maybe what you’re doing may be on the right path, but it’s not the end-all.
Alex: It’s confirmation that what you’re doing is in the right direction.
This story will appear in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
On the Friday before his Saturday Night Live debut, Noah Kahan is still nursing the wounds from an L he took at 30 Rock earlier in the week.
Kahan, the show’s next musical guest, was filming SNL’s obligatory midweek ads alongside cast member Sarah Sherman and host Emma Stone. “I always thought that I could be, like, a funny actor,” says the rising singer-songwriter — who is, indeed, pretty funny on social media. “Did not go down like that.” While Sherman and Stone easily bantered, the usually witty and loquacious Kahan stood stone-still, giving wooden readings of his couple of short lines.
“I was definitely super-nervous and just kind of like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” recalls Kahan, 27, still in slight disbelief at his own frozenness. “I feel like I’m usually able to navigate through [moments like that] and make it look OK. But that one, I was like, ‘Man, I just got dominated by Emma Stone and Sarah Sherman.’ ”
It’s a minor loss worth noting — simply because Kahan has had so few over the last year-and-a-half. After an occasionally frustrating first seven years on a major label — he signed to Mercury Records/Republic Records in 2015, recording two albums in more of a folk–pop, James Bay-esque mold — Kahan finally struck pay dirt with 2022’s Stick Season, following both a sonic pivot to alt-folk and a thematic shift to more personal, geographically specific writing based on his experiences growing up in northern New England. The rousing title track went viral on TikTok that summer, and the album debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 in October, Kahan’s first time making the chart.
But 2022 was just the warmup for the cold-weather singer-songwriter, whose sepia-toned ballads and stinging-throat stompers — as well as his breakout hit, named for the time of year in the Northeast when the trees go barren — have made him something of an unofficial ambassador for late autumn. Kahan’s crossover became undeniable in June with the release of his Stick Season deluxe edition, subtitled We’ll All Be Here Forever.
The reissue shot the album to No. 3 on the Billboard 200, largely on the strength of seven new tracks — one of which, the barnstorming, back-of-a-cop-car lament “Dial Drunk,” became his first Billboard Hot 100 hit, after an extensive tease on TikTok. That song went top 40 following the release of its remix featuring fellow Mercury/Republic star Post Malone — which also kick-started a run of new Stick Season remixes, with guests like Kacey Musgraves, Hozier and Gracie Abrams, who boosted their respective tracks onto the Hot 100 for the first time.
Noah Kahan photographed on December 1, 2023 in New York.
Wesley Mann
As Kahan talks to Billboard in December, he’s also ending 2023 with a number of notable firsts: his first Grammy Award nomination (for best new artist at the Feb. 4 ceremony), the announcement of his first major festival headlining gig (Atlanta’s Shaky Knees this May) and, of course, that SNL debut — which he had originally manifested in a 2021 tweet (“I wanna perform on SNL I don’t even care if it’s a off-brand version called Sunday Night Live”).
And in the end — even if his underwhelming teaser performance didn’t lead to any acting opportunities on his episode — his ripping performances of “Dial Drunk” and “Stick Season” still made for an overall win. Now, with winter on the horizon as we speak, the self-aware Kahan jokingly wonders if his appropriately dominant late-year run may be coming to its seasonal close.
“My time is ending, and we’re going into Bon Iver era now,” he says with a laugh. “He gets the baton.”
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Much like the trees’ gradual-then-sudden shedding of their autumn leaves, Stick Season’s takeover may seem — to anyone who wasn’t paying attention — like it came out of nowhere.
But Kahan had been growing his audience steadily, albeit slowly, for nearly a decade. It helped that he had the continued faith of Mercury/Republic, which longtime co-manager Drew Simmons says believed in Kahan’s talent from the first moment he auditioned for the label.
“He just played a couple of songs acoustic for them in their lounge space — and I remember [Republic founder and CEO] Monte Lipman popped in for a minute and was basically like, ‘Sign this kid tomorrow,’ ” Simmons recalls. “He said to Noah, ‘You have no idea how good you are.’ ”
Kahan’s first two albums, 2019’s Busyhead and 2021’s I Was / I Am, showed his talent and promise — particularly his ability to build worlds within a song and his ease with writing and performing shout-along choruses — but their brand of folk-pop aimed perhaps a little too squarely for a top 40 crossover bull’s-eye and suffered for their studiousness. But though both sets’ commercial performance was underwhelming, they allowed Kahan to develop his chops as a road warrior, gigging constantly around the country at midsize venues and developing a devoted following. “Noah’s story is one of proper artist development,” Simmons says. “He’s eight, nine years into his career, but those were really important years for his personal growth, his songwriting growth, his ability to own a live stage.”
Noah Kahan photographed on December 1, 2023 in New York.
Wesley Mann
But it was Kahan’s Cape Elizabeth EP, released between his first two albums in 2020 at the early height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that offered a blueprint for his later Stick Season success. He pulled back on the busy top 40 production and penned four of the EP’s five intimate tracks without co-writes — and while Cape Elizabeth made minimal mainstream impact, fans’ immediate connection to it showed that Kahan was on to something.
“The path he is on now started during the pandemic while he was home in Vermont and we were all trying to figure out what to do,” says Ben Adelson, executive vp/GM at Mercury. “He had written a lot of great folk songs that he wanted to self-record at home and that became Cape Elizabeth. We fully supported it, and that really helped set the stage for what has come.”
It also helped that around the same time, the mainstream winds were starting to blow back in Kahan’s direction. TikTok’s rise to prominence had provided the world a new, effective communal space for sharing music. And as the global pandemic forced everyone indoors (and inward), Kahan’s brand of introspective, reflective songwriting suddenly found an audience in listeners yearning for simpler times.
That shift could be seen in the slow-building success of organic-sounding, Americana-leaning country singer-songwriters like Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan, both of whom grew star-level followings in the last few years. And of course, no one forecast (or accelerated) the changing tides more than Taylor Swift, whose pair of rootsy 2020 surprise releases (folklore and evermore) put up equivalent numbers to her more pop-oriented releases and effectively raised the commercial ceiling for main-character alt-folk, a more Gen Z-friendly revival of the folk-pop boom of the early 2010s.
“The biggest artist in the world is writing very grounded folk music that tells stories,” recalls Kahan of Swift’s pivot. “And it allowed a huge new audience to find interest in that and to tap into that world. You know, some of these kids might not have been listening to music when Mumford & Sons, when Lumineers [were first around]. Taylor doing that brought that new generation to folk and folk-pop. And I definitely think that helped bring visibility, and some sort of significance, to what I was doing.”
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Nearly a decade since the commercial heyday of those strum-and-stomp hit-makers, they remained core influences on Kahan — “I never stopped f–king listening to Mumford & Sons,” he says — so when he decided to head in a new creative direction, alt-folk was a natural home for him. But while most of those groups tended to go lyrically broad with their arena-aimed anthems, Kahan narrowed his writing focus to his own experiences: growing up in Strafford, Vt., and Hanover, N.H., and the struggles with anxiety and depression he’s still navigating today.
“I like to think that storytelling is something that can always bring success, if you tell it in the right way and if you tell it with the right intention,” he says. “And so my intention behind this project actually was really pure — just to talk about New England and to talk about my childhood and my family. I wanted to examine those things, and I wanted to think about my hometown and think about my parents and think about my journey with mental illness — and I have a hard time doing that without writing songs.”
Unlike the previous generation of alt-folkies, Kahan is also, well, funny. His brand of humor is unmistakably influenced by his Jewish heritage on his father’s side — he refers to himself as “Jewish Capaldi” at live shows and says “sometimes I just feel like Larry David walking around” — and makes for a marked contrast from his avowedly straight-faced, chest-pounding antecedents, many of whom sang implicitly or explicitly about Christian themes.
“Growing up half Jewish and having this face on me… it has kind of been a big part of my identity,” he says, laughing. “I’m not going into a song, ‘Let’s get this one extra Jew-y.’ But I think it plays into the cultural aspect of [my music] — into the humor. And down to my diet. Like, I got the acid reflux stomach, just like my dad.”
Noah Kahan photographed on December 1, 2023 in New York.
Wesley Mann
Religion aside, Kahan’s mannerisms — the mile-a-minute speaking, the gently anxious energy, the self-deprecating and filter-free humor — should be familiar to anyone burdened with both an overachiever’s self-confidence and a late-bloomer’s insecurity. Ultimately, the biggest factor in Kahan’s leap to stardom might be the generation of terminally online, oversharing introverts that recognizes itself in his personality (both onstage and on social media) as well as in his lyrics. And that manifests at his shows, which are increasing in size — beyond festival headlining, Kahan will embark on his first amphitheater and arena tour this summer — without losing their immediacy and intensity, as crowds in the thousands now shout Kahan’s incredibly personal words back at him.
“No one else can tell my own story,” Kahan says. “And if people want to hear your story, then you’re in a really awesome position, because you hold the key to your own memories and people are interested in what those memories mean to you — and find connections to their own memories, to their own lives.”
While Kahan may have joked in December about passing the folk torch to Justin Vernon — the genre’s esteemed dead-of-winter representative — Stick Season actually has no end in sight. Kahan’s touring in support of the album will take him through Europe and Canada the next few months, before bringing him back to the United States this summer. Meanwhile, the remixes continue to roll out, most recently one with Sam Fender — maybe the closest thing to Kahan’s northeast England equivalent — on late-album highlight “Homesick.”
Most remarkably, the title track that kicked off this Kahan era a year-and-a-half ago is still growing on the Hot 100, recently hitting the top 20 for the first time, while the album it shares its name with snuck back into the Billboard 200’s top 10. Kahan also just announced a new Stick Season (Forever) reissue, due Feb. 9, which will include the entirety of his latest deluxe set, plus all of his previously released recent collaborations, two fresh ones and a new song, “Forever.” “We’ll All Be Here Forever” is starting to sound less like a lament and more like a premonition.
At a time when most albums struggle to maintain listener attention for a full month, let alone a year or longer, the extended impact of Stick Season is stunning — and Kahan and his team have savvily maximized its longevity, resulting in one of the biggest glow-ups a new artist has experienced this decade. He now counts superstars like Bryan and Olivia Rodrigo as both friends and peers; the latter covered “Stick Season” for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge and even sent him flowers after his best new artist Grammy nod, an award she herself won two years earlier. (“It was so incredibly sweet… she’s just a star, and she’s so nice,” Kahan says.)
It’s reasonable to wonder, at this point, if there’s a Stick Season saturation point — both for fans and for Kahan himself. He played over 100 gigs in 2023, and at press time, already had almost 80 on the books through September, with more likely on the way. With the number of opportunities available to him increasing along with his popularity, it’s a potentially perilous time for an artist who has been open about his mental health struggles — particularly while on the road — and who has waited for his moment as long as Kahan has.
“I have a real scarcity mindset,” he says. “Who knows when this will come again? So you have to take advantage of every opportunity. I think that mindset makes sense in a lot of ways, but in some ways it hurts you. Sometimes I overextend and feel like I’m overpromising and not able to deliver when the moment actually comes.”
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To that end, Kahan and his team have focused on how to balance his drive and his overall well-being. “We are saying no to a lot more than we ever have in the past,” Simmons says. “But I think he wants to make the most of this. He wants to be around for a long time, and he wants to put the work in, and he’s not afraid of that. So he’s kind of applying the mentality he had from the first seven or eight years of his career… it’s a grind, and it’s a lot of travel, a lot of work. But he is up for it.”
When Kahan does finally leave Stick Season behind, he’ll do so with the kind of established rabid fan base and artistic freedom to make him the envy of nearly every current performer not named Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, and plenty of room still to grow. Still, Kahan is ambivalent about how much bigger he even wants to get. He cops to being “super-competitive” both creatively and commercially, but also recognizes that “the level of microscopic attention that that next level seems to bring” might not necessarily be the best thing for him.
“Some days I’m like, “Man… I want to play f–king Gillette [Stadium] next!’ And then sometimes I’m like, “Whew, let’s just go back and play [New York’s] Bowery Ballroom and, like, chill out and play a bunch of acoustic songs,” he says. “I have to fight back against the next ‘more more more’ thing sometimes. Because it never really brings you whatever you think you’re going to get from it. It never brings you the total satisfaction and, like, self-peace that you think it would.”
Ultimately, though, he’s satisfied with his hard-earned level of current success and somewhat Zen about what may follow — even accidentally echoing the subtitle of the latest Stick Season edition while explaining his mindset.
“I think it’s about being optimistic about the future, but also being realistic about what you’re going to feel when you get there. And realizing that if you feel good here — and we’re here forever — then we’d be OK.”
This story will appear in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Songwriter Justin Tranter will host the Premiere Ceremony prior to the 2024 Grammy Awards, live from Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The event will stream live on Sunday, Feb. 4, at 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel and on live.GRAMMY.com.
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More than 80 of this year’s 94 Grammy Awards will be presented at this ceremony. Tranter is nominated for songwriter of the year, non-classical in recognition of his work with such artists as Miley Cyrus, Måneskin and Reneé Rapp.
The show will also include several performances. The opening number will feature J. Ivy, Larkin Poe, Pentatonix, Sheila E., and Jordin Sparks. Other artists scheduled to perform include current Grammy nominees Adam Blackstone, Brandy Clark, Kirk Franklin, Robert Glasper, Bob James, Laufey, Terrace Martin, and Gaby Moreno, as well as one artist who isn’t nominated this year, but has been in the past, acclaimed drummer Harvey Mason Sr., the father of Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr.
Mason Sr. amassed 10 Grammy nominations between 1975 and 2009. That’s twice as many nods as his son has garnered. Oddly, neither musician has yet won a Grammy.
Presenters for these first Grammy Awards of the day include Patti Austin, Natalia Lafourcade, Carly Pearce, Molly Tuttle, Rufus Wainwright, and five-time Grammy winner Jimmy Jam, former chair of the Recording Academy’s board of trustees. Mason jr. and Tammy Hurt, current chair of the board of trustees, will provide opening remarks.
“The Premiere Ceremony is the most incredible lead-up to Music’s Biggest Night,” Mason jr. said in a statement. “With an amazing line-up of presenters and performers, we’ll reveal and celebrate the winners of more than 80 categories, spanning the diverse genres and crafts that have contributed to such a spectacular year in music.”
This year’s Premiere Ceremony is produced by Branden Chapman, Ruby Marchand, Chantel Sausedo, and Rex Supa on behalf of the Recording Academy. Greg V. Fera is executive producer and Cheche Alara is music producer and music director.
The 66th Annual Grammy Awards will broadcast live following the Premiere Ceremony on CBS from 8-11:30 p.m. ET/5-8:30 p.m. PT. It will also stream live and on-demand on Paramount+.
Nominees: Jon Batiste’s World Music Radio, boygenius’ The Record, Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation, Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure, Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts, Taylor Swift’s Midnights, SZA’s SOS
This is the most female-dominated fields of album of the year contenders in Grammy history. Here are all the times female artists have dominated in the category.
Analysis: I asked three Billboard colleagues who they thought would win in each of the Big Four categories. They are all super-smart and plugged-in. In this category, they gave me three different answers (Swift, SZA and boygenius), so I guess I’m on my own here.
Each of Swift’s three album of the year winners represented a major chapter in her career – Fearless, her breakthrough as a pop/country superstar; 1989, a risky and hugely successful transition into pop; and Folklore, a perfectly-timed folkie side-step during the pandemic. The capsule summary of this album – a concept album about late-night ruminations inspired by her sleepless nights – isn’t quite as compelling.
SZA is a very strong challenger with SOS, which topped the Billboard 200 for 10 nonconsecutive weeks, longer than any of these other nominees. The narrative here is the emergence of a newly-minted superstar in an industry that relies on them.
SZA is vying to become the first Black woman to win in this category as a lead artist since Lauryn Hill 25 years ago for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Last year, many (including me) thought Beyoncé would win for Renaissance. Instead, Harry Styles won for Harry’s House, and while he was a deserving winner, there is a pent-up frustration on the part of many that R&B and hip-hop are so often passed over in the Big Four categories. That Grammy history is unavoidably playing into this year’s contest.
Boygenius is also aiming to make history. The all-female trio, consisting of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, would become just the second all-female group or duo to win in this category, following The Chicks, who won in 2007 for Taking the Long Way.
Boygenius wrote their entire album by themselves and produced it with Catherine Marks. The album even had a female mastering engineer, Pat Sullivan. (The album had both male and female engineer/mixers, so men weren’t completely sidelined here.) This is the only album of the year finalist to also be nominated for best engineered album, non-classical.
Batiste’s World Music Radio is nominated two years after he was the surprise winner in the category for We Are. Winning again so soon is a longshot, but if it happens, he’ll be the first artist to win twice in the space of three years as a lead artist since the mid-’70s, when Stevie Wonder won three times in a four-year span.
A side-note here: If Midnights (or Rodrigo’s Guts) wins, Serban Ghenea would become the first person (not artist, mind you) to win album of the year five times. The Canadian engineer/mixer previously won in the category as an engineer/mixer on Swift’s 1989 and Folklore, Adele’s 25 and Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic.
Predicted winner: SZA
And if not her: Taylor Swift, boygenius
Billy Joel has been added to the lineup of the 2024 Grammy Awards, set for Feb. 4 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Three days before that, Columbia Records will release Joel’s “Turn the Lights Back On,” the veteran performer’s first new pop song in nearly two decades.
Joel is the seventh performer announced to perform on the Grammy telecast, following Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Travis Scott, Luke Combs and Burna Boy. Joel is the first of the announced performers who isn’t a current Grammy nominee.
Joel is, however, a five-time Grammy winner. He won each of the Big Three awards in a two-year span in 1979-80 – album of the year for 52nd Street and record and song of the year for “Just the Way You Are.” Joel also received a Grammy Legend Award in 1991.
Rodrigo famously name-dropped Joel in her 2022 hit “Déjà Vu” – “I’ll bet that she knows Billy Joel/’Cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl,’” a reference to Joel’s 1983 smash. It is unknown if the Grammy telecast producers will arrange any kind of interaction between the two stars, but it seems too good an opportunity to pass up.
Joel, who has scored 33 top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, co-wrote “Turn the Lights Back On” with Freddy Wexler, Arthur Bacon and Wayne Hector. Wexler also produced it. It’s Joel’s first song released with words since 2007’s “All My Life,” a lush ballad Joel wrote for his then wife, Katie Lee.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is on the tail end of his record-breaking 10-year residency at Madison Square Garden. Joel has played the historic New York City arena once a month since January 2014, and will wrap with his 150th show in July. He continues to tour outside of the residency, including a sold-out stadium show in Tokyo on Thursday (Jan. 25).
Additional performers for the Grammy telecast will be announced.
Trevor Noah will host the Grammys for the fourth consecutive year. He, too, is a Grammy nominee. He is up for best comedy album for I Wish You Would. He’s the first Grammy host to be nominated for a Grammy that same year since Queen Latifah in 2005. Noah won a Primetime Emmy last week for outstanding talk series for The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.
The 66th annual Grammy Awards will be held on Sunday, Feb. 4 from 8 to 11:30 p.m. live ET/5 to 8:30 p.m. live PT on CBS, and will stream live and on-demand on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs).
The telecast will be produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy for the fourth consecutive year. Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins are executive producers.
For years, Recording Academy members who were fortunate enough to land Grammy nominations were given a pair of free tickets to the show. Now, the Academy is making members who are nominated buy their companion ticket.
The policy change, announced quietly in November, has drawn criticism. Rhiannon Giddens, a two-time Grammy winner in the folk field, wrote a thoughtful post on Facebook in which she expressed her disappointment with the new policy, and put it in the context of life getting harder for working-class musicians.
Early in her post, she talked about the experience of going to the Grammys for the first time in February 2011, when her band Carolina Chocolate Drops was nominated for best traditional folk album for Genuine Negro Jig. Spoiler alert: They won.
“People might not know this, but it’s expensive to go to the GRAMMYs – if you are nominated, you pay for your flight, hotel, hair, makeup, dress, food, what have you, yourself. All nominees receive a plus one to the ceremony and after party, and for a lot of non-mainstream folks, win or lose, it’s a moment of a lifetime.”
Then she dealt with the Academy’s recent announcement about charging nominated members for their +1 tickets.
“The onslaught on the working class musician was taken up a notch this year. I am not going to the GRAMMYs for various reasons in February but I have just heard that the companion ticket is no longer free but costs 1200 dollars.
“For all the big names that’s easy, and for middle class musicians like me, its doable, if super annoying. For the folks who are just making ends meet, harder than ever in a world that is systematically erasing every avenue the musician used to have to actually make money from their music, from Spotify to closed venues to digitized orchestras, it’s a slap in the face.
“There are folks within the GRAMMY ranks who really love music and are trying to change things for the better. I get that. The afternoon ceremony has slowly been upgraded and is now even livestreamed! But honestly, this is a really bad look – and it makes it ever more obvious who is valued, and more specifically what (that would be lots of money, for the folks in the back).
Giddens attached a photo of her at the Grammys in 2011 and noted, “This picture wouldn’t exist if the policy then was what it is now, and that makes me sad.
“Music is art. Family. Empathy. Love. We’ve made it about money, and that’s a tragedy bigger than we know.”
Asked to comment, the Academy provided this statement to Billboard: “The recent adjustment affects only nominated members of the Recording Academy, which now brings them in line with all other nominees who already pay this cost for a companion seat. We acknowledge tickets to our show can be expensive, but the additional revenue raised from this small subset of our membership allows the Recording Academy, a not-for-profit organization, to serve many thousands of music people by helping to fund our educational initiatives, advocacy efforts, curated programming, and direct assistance extended to music people facing challenges. As with everything we do, the Recording Academy will continue to work to improve and evolve how we serve our music community.”
Giddens’ statement that Grammy tickets cost $1,200 was a little off. Tickets were made available this year at both higher and lower price points. (Tickets at all pricing tiers are now sold out.) Platinum tickets went for $2,000 each, Gold tickets for $1,000 each, Silver tickets for $562.50 each, and Bronze tickets for $375 each. Members may purchase two tickets within any of these pricing tiers and may also purchase two additional Bronze tickets, though additional Bronze tickets are $500, not $375. All of these pricing tiers include the Premiere Ceremony (a.k.a the pre-telecast awards). None of the tiers include the after-party.
An Academy spokesman said that this policy change of charging nominated members for their +1 tickets is true for all nominees, in marquee categories as well as the lower-profile categories that are presented at the Premiere Ceremony.
(Each year, all but about 11 awards are presented at the Premiere Ceremony, which is livestreamed on Grammy.com. These include some high-profile categories, though the biggest awards – including the vaunted Big Four — album, record and song of the year plus best new artist – are presented on the live telecast.)
This isn’t the only money-tightening change the Academy has instituted recently. On July 10, it announced that it was raising annual membership dues from $100 to $150, its first dues increase since 2000. The increase took effect on Aug. 1.
The Academy sought to justify the dues increase in an email to voting members. “It is important to highlight the significant accomplishments we have achieved together since the last dues increase in 2000. We have organized over 650 events across 12 Chapters, celebrated and recognized countless GRAMMY Award nominees and winners, provided $110 million in aid through MusiCares, and actively supported the passage of numerous bills at both the state and federal level to protect creators’ rights.”
A third example of upping fees is that the Academy used to allow members to enter an unlimited number of entries in the Grammy process. Since 2022, all professional and voting members of the Recording Academy receive five “courtesy entries” per year. If they choose to enter more than five entries, they must pay. Last year, the fee was $40 for entries made between July 17-31, $75 for entries made between Aug. 1-23 and $125 for entries made between Aug. 24-31.
The Academy justifies charging a fee for any member making more than five entries by saying, “The per-entry fee structure encourages entrants to consider the value of each entry and make mindful decisions to put forward work that they truly believe is Grammy-worthy.”
Gidden is nominated for two Grammys at this year’s ceremony, which is set for Feb. 4 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles – best Americana album for You’re the One and best American roots performance for a track from that album, “You Louisiana Man.”
It’s her first nod for best Americana album; her third for best American roots performance.
Gidden received her second of two Grammy Awards two years ago – best folk album for They’re Calling Me Home, with Francesco Turrisi.
Gidden won a Pulitzer Prize for Music last year for Omar, a collaboration with Michael Abels. That’s the same award that Kendrick Lamar won five years ago for Damn. Gidden has also been honored at the International Folk Music Awards and Americana Music Honors & Awards, among others.
Six female solo artists and an all-female group account for all but one of the 2024 Grammy nominations for album of the year. Only Jon Batiste’s World Music Radio kept male artists from being shut out in the top category this year. This is the 12th time that female artists have dominated the album of […]
Six days after announcing Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo as the first performers set for the 2024 Grammy Awards, CBS announced three more performers: Travis Scott, Luke Combs and Burna Boy. These bookings bring gender, genre and racial diversity to Music’s Biggest Night.
The announcement was made during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s NFL football game (Kansas City vs. Buffalo), just as last week’s performer announcement was made during the fourth quarter of the AFC wild-card game. Both games were broadcast on CBS, which has aired the Grammys since 1973.
All three of the newly-added performers are current Grammy nominees. Scott is nominated for best rap album for Utopia. He was also nominated in that category for his previous studio album, Astroworld. Scott has amassed 10 nominations. He has yet to win.
Combs is nominated for best country solo performance for his version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Chapman performed the song as the final performance of the night on the Grammy telecast in February 1989, so there may be reason to hope the Grammys can land a collaborative performance on this year’s show. This is Combs’ seventh nomination. He too has yet to win. He was nominated for best new artist five years ago, but lost to Lipa. (Both artists have done exceptionally well in the ensuing five years.)
Burna Boy is nominated in four categories – best global music album (I Told Them…), best African music performance (“City Boys”), best global music performance (“Alone”), and best melodic rap performance (“Sittin’ on Top of the World”). He won best global music album three years ago for Twice as Tall.
Additional performers will be announced in the two weeks leading up to the Feb. 4 ceremony.
Trevor Noah will host the Grammys for the fourth consecutive year. He too is a Grammy nominee. He is up for best comedy album for I Wish You Would. He’s the first Grammy host to be nominated for a Grammy that same year since Queen Latifah in 2005. Noah won a Primetime Emmy last week for outstanding talk series for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
The 66th annual Grammy Awards will be held on Sunday, Feb. 4 from 8:00-11:30 p.m. live ET/5:00-8:30 p.m. live PT on CBS and will stream live and on-demand on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs).
The telecast will be produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy for the fourth consecutive year. Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins are executive producers.
Spotify‘s annual best new artist party is returning for Grammy Week 2024.
On Thursday, Feb. 1, the streamer will showcase live performances from Grammys best new artist nominees Noah Kahan, Gracie Abrams, Victoria Monet and Jelly Roll, among others, at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The event kicks off at 7 p.m.
“2024 marks eight years since launching Spotify’s Best New Artist campaign and seven years that we have hosted the party to honor the nominees,” says Jeremy Erlich, Spotify’s global head of music, in a statement. “Our mission is to support new artists and artist development, and BNA is a moment to honor the best of the best. It’s been incredible to celebrate with the artists and their teams and see this event grow to what it has become today.”
“Our team has been working for months to bring this event to life,” added Joe Hadley, Spotify’s global head of music partnerships & audience. “Not only do we get to celebrate the artists, but we also get to lift up our partners on the labels, publishers, management and industry teams who we work with day in and day out. Spotify prides itself on being the premiere partner for artists of all stages and their teams. It’s a privilege to not only showcase the incredible art being made but also bring opportunities to artists that help propel careers to the next level.”
The year’s other best new artist nominees are Fred again.., Ice Spice, Coco Jones and The War and Treaty.
Spotify first hosted its best new artist Grammy party in 2017, when it showcased performances by two nominees: The Chainsmokers and Maren Morris. Last year, the party featured performances from all 10 best new artist nominees — Anitta, Omar Apollo, Domi & JD Beck, Muni Long, Latto, Måneskin, Tobe Nwigwe, Molly Tuttle, Wet Leg and eventual winner Samara Joy — at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.
Lainey Wilson’s Bell Bottom Blues has been an awards magnet in the past year. The collection won album of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 11 and at the Country Music Awards on Nov. 8. On Feb. 4, we’ll find out if it becomes the eighth album to complete country […]