Lamar’s album, To Pimp A Butterfly, is up for Album Of The Year, competing alongside Taylor Swift’s 1989 and The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind The Madness. While it showed an ear for interpretation beyond his years, his position as one of the contenders in the jazz instrumental album and improvised jazz solo categories points to the importance of buzz once it comes time for Grammy nominations.
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Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color and Chris Stapleton’s Traveller are also up for the coveted Album Of The Year. “Artists today have the ability to be exposed to multiple kinds of genres in music, and we’ll give credit to the world of technology we live in that gives easy access to whatever direction you want to head in”.
Song nominees run from Lamar’s “Alright”, which touches on police brutality, to Swift’s tongue-in-cheek celebration of romantic fickleness, “Blank Space”.
Also up for Song of the Year is Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” and “See You Again” by Whiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth.
The best new artist category singles out Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett, British guitarist-singer James Bay, country singer-songwriter Sam Hunt, YouTube phenom Tori Kelly and pop singer Meghan Trainor.
Instead, some of the top albums eligible for honors in February came out past year.
English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran’s viral ballad Thinking Out Loud was also nominated for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Additionally, music producer/songwriter Max Martin receives six nominations and mastering engineer Tom Coyne, rapper Drake, and engineers/mixers Serban Ghenea and John Hanes each earn five nominations.
Overall, nine artists scored four nominations each, and an additional 17 are up for three awards apiece.
Following is a sampling of nominations from the GRAMMY Awards’ 30 Fields and 83 categories.
Lamar – who has won wide critical acclaim for his politically charged latest album “To Pimp a Butterfly” – earned 11 nominations for the music industry’s biggest awards, the highest number in a single night other than Michael Jackson’s 12 nods in 1984 during the King of Pop’s “Thriller” days.
But Swift was ahead in the four most-watched categories, with nominations in all of them except Best New Artist. In fact, the trio even performed the song at last year’s televised Grammy ceremony. Taylor Swift’s “1989”, which came out October 27, 2014, tied the Weeknd’s “Beauty Behind the Madness” for the second-most nominations, with seven.
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For those looking for a “Swift vs. Lamar” narrative, however, things aren’t so simple: the Best Pop Group/Duo Performance and Best Music Video nominees include their collaboration “Bad Blood”.
