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Grammys

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The Grammy Awards are taking over Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Sunday (Feb. 5), and some of the biggest names in music are vying for the coveted album of the year award.

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ABBA’s Voyage, Adele’s 30, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, Beyoncé’s Renaissance, Mary J. Blige’s Good Morning Gorgeous (Deluxe), Brandi Carlile’s In These Silent Days, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres, Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Lizzo’s Special and Harry Styles’ Harry’s House are all up for album of the year.

We at Billboard want to know who you’d like to see take home the award. Let us know by voting below.

The Grammy Awards’ best new artist category, also known as one of the Big Four awards of the night, often has lasting effects on an artists’ career. In fact, eight of the last 10 best new artist winners at the Grammy Awards have gone on to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But what is the criteria for being nominated for best new artist, and who are some of the past winners in the category? The latest episode of Billboard Explains breaks it down.

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The best new artist category is almost as old as the Grammys itself. Introduced at the second annual Grammy Awards on Nov. 29, 1959, Bobby Darin was the first artist to ever receive the award. The category has been present at every single Grammy Awards since, with the exception of the 1967 ceremony.

Billboard’s Awards Editor Paul Grein summed up the purpose of the best new artist award for Billboard Explains. “What the best new artist nomination does is it puts a spotlight on people, for the vast Grammy audience, which consists of music fans, but also people who are maybe just casual music fans,” he said. “They’re probably being introduced to these artists.”

As for the award’s requirements, the original rules stated that a nominee must be an artist who has released a minimum of five tracks or one album, must not have submitted for the category more than three times and has made a significant breakthrough during a year’s eligibility period. These rules, however, have changed over the years. A notable instance was Gaga’s lack of nomination in the best new artist category because her single “Just Dance” was nominated in best dance recording in 2009. The rules were changed to state that an artist may be nominated as long as that artist has not previously released an entire album or won a Grammy.

The most recent winner of the best new artist was Olivia Rodrigo due to the success of her debut album SOUR and its hit single, “Drivers License.” Billie Eilish won in 2020, and became the second person and the youngest person to ever win all big four categories in the same year. Other winners include Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, Sam Smith, Adele and Mariah Carey. Going home with a best new artist award often sees the artist earning a boost in streams, album sales and/or performance on the Billboard charts.

After the video, catch up on more Billboard Explains videos and learn about the evolution of girl groups, BBMAs, NFTs, SXSW, the magic of boy bands, American Music Awards, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the Hot 100 chart, how R&B/hip-hop became the biggest genre in the U.S., how festivals book their lineups, Billie Eilish’s formula for success, the history of rap battles, nonbinary awareness in music, the Billboard Music Awards, the Free Britney movement, rise of K-pop in the U.S., why Taylor Swift is re-recording her first six albums, the boom of hit all-female collaborations, how Grammy nominees and winners are chosen, why songwriters are selling their publishing catalogs, how the Super Bowl halftime show is booked and why Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” was able to shoot to No. 1 on the Hot 100.

Harry Styles will perform on the 2023 Grammy Awards, set for Sunday, Feb. 5. The announcement was made on Sunday (Jan. 29) during the fourth quarter of the AFC Championship game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Kansas City Chiefs. The game aired on CBS, the Grammys’ network since 1973.

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Styles is nominated for six Grammys, including album, record and song of the year. These are his first nominations in Big Four categories.

The Recording Academy made its first performers announcement on Wednesday (Jan. 25) – Lizzo, Bad Bunny, Mary J. Blige, Brandi Carlile, Luke Combs, Steve Lacy and Sam Smith & Kim Petras.

All of these are artists are nominated in Big Four categories this year except for Smith & Petras and Combs. “Unholy” by Smith & Petras would almost certainly have been nominated for record and song of the year, but the single was released just eight days before eligibility closed on Sept. 30, 2021 – a bit too late to fully register with Grammy voters. As it is, it is nominated for best pop duo/group performance.

The Grammys are getting a jump on the Brit Awards, which will be telecast from the O2 in London six days later (on Feb. 11). The Brits have also booked Styles, Lizzo and Smith & Petras, among other acts.

Styles performed “Watermelon Sugar” on the Grammy telecast two years ago. He also won his first Grammy for the track  – best pop solo performance.

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards will air live from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and will be hosted for the third year in a row by Emmy-winning comedian Trevor Noah. The show will be broadcast live on Sunday, Feb. 5 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS and will be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards are produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy. Raj Kapoor serves as showrunner and executive producer, alongside Ben Winston and Jesse Collins as executive producers. Phil Heyes joins the team for the first time as director. Eric Cook is co-executive producer with Tabitha Dumo, Tiana Gandelman, Patrick Menton. David Wild is producer.

Prior to the telecast, the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony will be broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater at 12:30 p.m. PT and will be streamed live on live.grammy.com. Randy Rainbow, a first-time Grammy nominee this year for best comedy album for A Little Brains, A Little Talent, is co-hosting the show. His co-host has yet to be named.

People attending the 65th Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, will have many options for post-show parties, but if they attend the Recording Academy’s official afterparty — dubbed the 2023 Grammy Celebration — they will see performances by headliner Flo Rida, as well as Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, who will perform in the Grammy Celebration Jazz Lounge.

The 2023 Grammy Celebration will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, which is adjacent to Crypto.com Arena, where the Grammy telecast will be held. Michelle Pesce will return as the evening’s DJ.

Flo Rida is a five-time Grammy nominee. He was nominated for best rap song and best rap/sung collaboration for his breakthrough smash, “Low” featuring T-Pain; best rap album for R.O.O.T.S, album of the year as a featured artist on Lady Gaga‘s The Fame; and best rap/sung collaboration for “Wild Ones” with Sia.

O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra have won three Grammys for best Latin jazz album, and are nominated in that category again this year for Fandango at the Wall in New York. O’Farrill has won two additional Grammys for best instrumental composition.

The Recording Academy will produce the post-telecast Grammy Celebration, which is expected to draw more than 5,000 guests. “We’re excited to return to Los Angeles with a larger-than-life experience that truly captivates the last year in music,” Branden Chapman, COO & head of entertainment for the Recording Academy, said in a statement.

Following the event, the Recording Academy will once again partner with the charitable organization Musically Fed to repurpose leftover food to feed those in need in the local community. The Academy will also partner with that organization to repurpose leftover food from the MusiCares Persons of the Year event on Feb. 3 and the official telecast.

The 2023 Grammy Celebration is a private, ticketed event.

Though Beyoncé’s Renaissance was unanimously acclaimed and commercially successful, if it wins album of the year at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 5 — as many observers (including me) expect — it will be at least in part because her previous studio album, Lemonade, was passed over in that category.

If you watched the 59th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 12, 2017, you doubtless remember the moment when Adele’s 25 prevailed over Lemonade. In her acceptance speech, a highly emotional Adele all but handed the Grammy to Beyoncé, who was standing in the front row with her husband, Jay-Z, as the audience rose to its feet to celebrate Adele’s win. Adele’s speech stands as one of the most selfless and gracious in awards show history.

After some introductory thanks, Adele addressed the issue of competing with a friend and an artist she greatly admires. “I can’t possibly accept this award and I’m very humbled and I’m very grateful and gracious, but my artist of my life is Beyoncé and this album to me – the Lemonade album – was so monumental.”

Addressing the singer directly, she continued: “Beyoncé, it was just so monumental and so well thought-out and so beautiful and soul-baring and we all got to see another side to you that you don’t always let us see, and we appreciate that. And all us artists here, we f–king adore you. You are our light. And the way that you make me and my friends feel – the way you make my Black friends feel – is empowering. And you make them stand up for themselves and I love you. I always have and I always will.”

While no one questions Adele’s talent, some wondered if it was fair that Adele won a second award in that category before Beyoncé won it even once. (I Am…Sasha Fierce had lost to Taylor Swift’s Fearless; Beyoncé had lost to Beck’s Morning Phase.)

Of course, it isn’t Adele’s “fault” that she won. Still, an impression remains that Beyoncé was wronged – and that Grammy voters have a chance to make it right this year.

Renaissance wouldn’t be the first album to win album of the year at least in part as a “make-up” award for a previous album or albums that had not been so awarded. Take a look at this list, shown in reverse chronological order. (All years shown are the Grammy year of record.)

Listen to the 64 Grammy winners for album of the year, and they’ll tell the story of the last six decades of popular music. Except, well, not really, at all. Zoom out on all 64 and squint a little and you might be able to see a general progression from jazz and vocal standards to rock to pop and hip-hop, but the timeline traced by the album of the year winners is really more of a Jeremy Bearimy: constantly curving, skipping around and looping back unpredictably.

That’s part of the fun of the Grammys canon, though: The tale it tells isn’t always the most coherent, but it’s rich with moment-in-time pretzel logic that makes sense when viewed in totality — not to mention fascinating quirks forgotten in most enduring pop narratives of the past. And every so often, the Recording Academy gets it totally right, rewarding an album so undeniably essential that all voting roads lead back to it as the one and only answer. (And then the next year it might very well revert to an entirely WTF selection.)

So before we crown a victor for 2023, let’s look back at the 64 albums that brought home the biggest honor from Music’s Biggest Night so far — hits, misses, and all the many negotiations in between — to see how they stack up against one another. You might need a seatbelt to guard against the sheer whiplash caused by careening through some of these wildly disparate albums, but viewed all together they provide a pretty good representation of the wild ride that the Grammys have taken us on since 1959. 

Funnyman Randy Rainbow is set to co-host the Premiere Ceremony prior to the 2023 Grammy Awards, where the vast majority of the 91 Grammy Awards are presented.
The Premiere Ceremony will return to the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, which is adjacent to Crypto.com Arena, where the Grammy telecast will return. The Premiere Ceremony will stream live on Sunday, Feb. 5 at 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel and on live.Grammy.com.

Rainbow received his first Grammy nomination this year for A Little Brains, A Little Talent, which is competing for best comedy album. Fans of his wickedly funny song parodies know that he actually has a lot of both.

The opening number will feature a performance by Blind Boys of Alabama, La Marisoul from La Santa Cecilia and additional performers. Other artists scheduled to perform include current nominees Arooj Aftab, Madison Cunningham, Samara Joy, Anoushka Shankar and Carlos Vives. Joy is a surprise best new artist nominee this year. Aftab was nominated in that category last year.

Presenters include current nominees DOMi & JD BECK (another surprise best new artist nominee this year), Babyface (who received a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 2021), Myles Frost, Arturo O’Farrill and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, as well as five-time Grammy winner Jimmy Jam, a former chair of the board of trustees of the Recording Academy.

Additional talent and Rainbow’s co-host will be announced in coming days.

Tammy Hurt, chair of the Recording Academy’s board of trustees, will provide opening remarks.

This year’s Premiere Ceremony is produced by Chantel Sausedo, a veteran of Grammy Awards telecasts, along with three top Recording Academy executives — Branden Chapman, chief operating officer; Ruby Marchand, chief awards & industry officer; and Rex Supa, vice president, production and event operations. Greg Fera is executive producer and Cheche Alara is music producer and musical director.

Hosts of recent Premiere Ceremonies have included Margaret Cho, Shaggy, Jhene Aiko and LeVar Burton.

City National Bank has signed on as the first-ever presenting sponsor of the Premiere Ceremony.

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards will be broadcast live on CBS and stream live and on-demand on Paramount+ at 8-11:30 p.m. ET / 5-8:30 p.m. PT.

On Grammy Sunday, fans can access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, including performances, acceptance speeches, interviews from the Grammy Live red-carpet special, and more via the Recording Academy’s digital experience on live.GRAMMY.com.

When the nominations for the 2023 Oscars were announced on Tuesday (Jan. 24), just one Black woman was among the 10 women nominated in acting categories – Angela Bassett for best supporting actress for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Viola Davis in The Woman King and Danielle Deadwyler in Till were thought to have a strong chance of being nominated for best actress, but both were passed over – a fact that has stirred some controversy, such as this pointed commentary in The Los Angeles Times on Thursday (Jan. 26).

Black women fared much better in the marquee categories in the 2023 Grammy nominations, which were announced on Nov. 15. Three Black women were among the 10 lead artists nominated for album of the year, widely viewed as the most prestigious Grammy Award – Beyoncé for Renaissance, Lizzo for Special and Mary J. Blige for the deluxe edition of Good Morning Gorgeous.

Beyoncé is regarded as the front-winner to win in that category, after having lost in her three previous bids. I Am…Sasha Fierce lost to Taylor Swift’s Fearless; Beyoncé to Beck’s Morning Phase; and Lemonade to Adele’s 25.

Oscar and Grammy voters have not always been generous to Black women. Only one Black woman has won the Oscar for best actress – Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball (2001). Amazingly, you have to go back even further than that to find the last Black woman to win the Grammy for album of the year as a lead artist. It hasn’t happened since Lauryn Hill took the 1998 prize for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Black women have fared far better at the Oscars in supporting roles than in lead roles, with nine Black actresses winning best supporting actress – Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind (1939), Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost (1990), Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (2006), Mo’nique in Precious (2009), Octavia Spencer in The Help (2011), Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave (2013), Davis in Fences (2016), Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) and Ariana DeBose in West Side Story (2021).

It’s worth noting that Davis played the female lead in Fences. She had won the Tony for best lead actress in a play for the same role in 2010, but agreed to be slotted in the supporting category at the Oscars to boost her chances of winning. (The lead actress winner that year was Emma Stone – Davis’ former costar in The Help – for the blockbuster La La Land.)

If Beyoncé wins album of the year, she’ll become the fourth Black woman to take that award as a lead artist. Natalie Cole was the first for Unforgettable With Love, a tribute to her late father Nat King Cole (1991), followed by Whitney Houston two years later for The Bodyguard soundtrack and then Hill five years after that.

The perception of disrespect for Black women in this year’s best actress nominations will probably work to Bassett’s advantage in the voting. She is seen as the front-runner to win best supporting actress, 29 years after she was nominated for best actress for playing Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It. She would become the 10th Black woman to win best supporting actress; the eighth in the past two decades.

The way that Black women can fairly easily win Oscars in the supporting category, but have a hard time winning in the lead category, is analogous to a situation at the Grammys, where Black women (and men, for that matter) do very well in terms of numbers of overall awards, but less well in the vaunted Big Four categories.

Beyoncé is one of only three artists in Grammy history to amass 28 or more Grammys, but just one of those awards has come in a Big Four category – her 2009 song of the year win for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

At this year’s Grammys, she is likely to tie or surpass Sir Georg Solti for the most wins by anyone in Grammy history. (The late classical conductor won 31 awards.) While that statistic is likely to grab the headlines, her expected win for album of the year – the biggest of the Big Four categories – may be even more significant.

On Sunday, Feb. 5, six days before they are set to perform at the Brit Awards, Kim Petras and Sam Smith, as well as Lizzo will perform at the 2023 Grammy Awards. Other Grammy performers announced on Wednesday (Jan. 25) are Bad Bunny, Mary J. Blige, Brandi Carlile, Luke Combs and Steve Lacy. Additional performers will be announced in the coming days.

All of these are artists are nominated in Big Four categories at the Grammys except for Combs, and Smith and Petras. “Unholy” by Smith and Petras would almost certainly have been nominated for record and song of the year, but it was released just eight days before eligibility closed on Sept. 30, 2022 – a bit too late to fully register with Grammy voters. As it is, it is nominated for best pop duo/group performance.

Combs received three nominations: best country duo/group performance (“Outrunnin’ Your Memory”), best country song (“Doin’ This”) and best country album (Growin’ Up).

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards will air live from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, and will be hosted for the third year in a row by Emmy-winning comedian Trevor Noah. The show will broadcast live on Sunday, Feb. 5, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS, and will be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards are produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy. Raj Kapoor serves as showrunner and executive producer, alongside Ben Winston and Jesse Collins as executive producers. Phil Heyes joins for the first time as director, Eric Cook as co-executive producer with Tabitha Dumo, Tiana Gandelman, Patrick Menton, and David Wild as producers.

Prior to the telecast, the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony will be broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater at 12:30 p.m. PT and will be streamed live on live.Grammy.com.