Music’s biggest awards announced their contenders this week. There are only 78 categories this year, which sounds like a lot but down from 109 last year it’s quite the drop. The result is a mix of the old familiar names and some wonderfully new additions but numbers a little lower than usual.
My beloved Adele did pretty well, racking up 6 nominations including Record and Song of the Year for the inescapably popular “Rolling in the Deep”. The Grammy voters clearly Sophie’s choiced amongst the singer’s entire eligible album to pick the nominee for Best Pop Solo Performance, rightly going with “Someone Like You”. “Rolling in the Deep” interestingly made the cut for Short-form Video. Oh, and she’s obviously also up for Album of the Year for 21.
Also with 6 nominations is the freaking cool Bruno Mars for Doo-wops and Hooligans, “Grenade” scoring noms in the biggest categories.
Foo Fighters are up there too in nomination numbers, just not in the more prominent categories (they’re over where the amps turn up to 11). They’re in Album of the Year but not Record or Song.
Kanye West topped’em all with 7 nominations, mostly because he works so damn much. He’s up against himself more than once, but neither the polarizing Watch the Throne (with Jay-Z) or his adored My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy made the cut for Album of the Year.
Lady Gaga and Rihanna scored the final Album of the Year spots, beating out Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, though she does have a handful of nods for “Mean”.
In the Best New Artist category Bon Iver will battle it out with The Band Perry, J. Cole and Skrillex as the rest of us try and wrap are heads around the fact that household name Nicki Minaj still counts as a “new artist”.
On a personal note, Seth MacFarlane’s Music is Better Than Words scored a surprise pair of nods, bringing a smile to my face. Louis CK, Kathy Griffin, Tina Fey and Betty White are all up there too (for spoken word and comedy albums) as is the soundtrack to The Book of Mormon (a sure winner- Parker and Stone could have an EGOT before they know it!).
The 54th Annual Grammy Awards are on February 12th at 8pm on CBS.
Click HERE to read the full list of nominees.