The Winners and Losers of the

2021 Grammy Nominations

Taylor Swift is finally back in the Academy’s good
graces, but what did the Weeknd do to get
snubbed?
Justin Sayles Nov 24, 2020, 1:11pm EST

Getty Images/Ringer illustration

Taylor Swift is finally back in the Academy’s good graces, but what did
the Weeknd do to get snubbed?

On Tuesday, the Recording Academy announced the nominations for the

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 63rd Annual Grammys, slated to be held on January 31. While we’ll have
to wait a few months to find out who’s actually taking home awards, we’re
ready to crown some winners and losers based on who made the field. There
were some egregious snubs and some big breakthroughs, but the best place
to start is with an old favorite who finally made her way back into the
Academy’s good graces …

Winner: Taylor Swift’s Perfectly Engineered Comeback

The Academy has not been kind to Taylor’s past two records. 2017’s
tepid Reputation was her least-nominated since her self-titled 2006
debut, snagging a lone nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album. 2019’s
Lover saw a warmer reception both from critics and fans, but the
Grammys shut her out of the Album of the Year category. 2020, however,
is a different story for Swift. On Tuesday, Taylor received six
nominations, tied for the second most this year. That includes an Album
of the Year nod for Folklore, her cabin-core excursion released in July.

A win in that category in January would give her the most ever by a
female solo artist and tie her with Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder for
most all time. And she has to like her odds: While the AOTY category
also includes Ringer favorites Haim and Dua Lipa, Swift doesn’t appear
to have much competition. (That Coldplay somehow got a nomination
for an album everyone forgot happened is Peak Grammys.) After a few
years in the wilderness, Taylor appears ready to return to the Grammy
spotlight. She just had to take her music to the wilderness to get there.

Loser: Grammy Pandemic Brain (No Weeknd?

Seriously?)
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 You know the lockdown phenomenon where you can’t remember if
something happened last week or last year? That’s the only explanation
for the absence of the Weeknd in Tuesday’s nominations. The Toronto
singer released the year’s biggest song (“Blinding Lights”) and one of its
biggest albums (March’s pretty decent After Hours). Yet the Academy
seems to have forgotten both. There were other surprising snubs—Lady
Gaga, Harry Styles, and Justin Bieber were all shut out of the big general
categories—but none were bigger than the Academy’s passing over the
Weeknd, who came into the day as the betting favorite in both song and
album categories, according to Gold Derby. But while it’s likely
disappointing for Abel, he can console himself with the knowledge that
he’ll be the lead performer at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show,
where he’ll be crooning songs vaguely about cocaine sex in front of a
half-empty crowd. Don’t see how we’ll forget that happened.

Winner: Off-Year Beyoncé

Beyoncé received the most nominations on Tuesday with nine. That

brings her career total to 79, making her the most nominated woman in
Grammys history. (Overall, she’s tied with Paul McCartney for third
most; she’ll presumably pass both Quincy Jones and her husband, Jay-Z,
both of whom have 80, at some point soon.) The most impressive part of
Beyoncé’s nomination tally this year is that it comes during something of
an off year: Her nods came from July’s stunning visual film Black Is King,
the expanded edition of The Lion King: The Gift, and her OnlyFans-
referencing guest spot on Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage (Remix).” It’s
hard to imagine any other artist leading the nominations without an
album’s worth of new material. But if anybody could release crumbs and
get this kind of acknowledgement from the Academy, it’s Beyoncé.
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 Loser: The Grammys’ Handling of K-Pop (and Latin
Pop)

Today was supposed to be something of a coronation for BTS, the

biggest group in the world. The boy band’s Map of the Soul: 7 made
them the best-selling artist in South Korean history, topped the charts in
the U.S., and launched them into another stratosphere of fame. But they
landed just one nomination on Tuesday: Best Pop Duo/Group
Performance for “Dynamite.” It’s a big disappointment for the group,
which had been angling for big nominations. “I think the Grammys are
the last part, like the final part of the whole American journey,” band
member RM told Esquire recently. One bright side: The group’s latest
album, Be, is eligible for the 2022 awards, meaning they’ll get another
chance at completing the journey. (There were also rumblings that
BLACKPINK and SuperM could get some love in the Best New Artist
category, but neither scored a single nomination on Tuesday.)

Meanwhile, the Grammys largely ignored Latin pop, nominating “Un

Dia” by J Balvin, Dua Lipa, Bad Bunny, and Tainy in that same Best Pop
Duo/Group Performance category. (Bad Bunny, who had a breakout
2020, received another nod for Latin Pop Album for YHLQMDLG.) With
international and non-English music becoming more popular in the
United States than ever before, it raises the question of how long will it
take the Grammys to fully acknowledge those artists—and how long the
ceremony can maintain any relevancy if it doesn’t.

Winner: TikTok

Roddy Ricch got six nominations, including Song of the Year for “The
Box.” Megan Thee Stallion got four and Doja Cat got three; both were
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 nominated for Best New Artist and Record of the Year. All three artists
owe at least part of their success to their viral breakouts on TikTok. The
Grammys ignored a lot of important new music, but they’re at least not
letting these artists slip through the cracks.

Loser: Big Crossover Country Releases

There was one important milestone in the country section this year: The
album category is made up entirely of woman artists (including Little Big
Town, which is composed of two women and two men). Given
Nashville’s well-documented struggles with gender equality, this
shouldn’t go unnoticed.

Country as a whole, however, had a strange day on Tuesday. No country

acts snuck into the big general categories. More bizarre: Crossover
albums from Luke Combs, Sam Hunt, and the Chicks were shut out from
even the country categories. (Jack Antonoff received a Producer of the
Year nomination for his 2020 résumé, which included his work on
Gaslighter.) While we should celebrate history being made, we should
also be asking why these major releases were nowhere to be found.

Winner: Phoebe Bridgers (Plus a Few Other

Nominations We Like)

On Monday, Bridgers earned her first Hot 100 hit with her and Maggie
Rogers’s cover of “Iris” and released a great Christmas EP. On Tuesday,
she picked up four nominations, including one for Best New Artist. Is any
musician on a hotter streak at the moment?

Some other Ringer favorites—including Fiona Apple, Fontaines D.C.,

Sturgill Simpson, Beck, Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Big Thief, and the
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 Strokes—received nominations. But no nomination excites this writer
more than Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist getting a nod for May’s excellent
Alfredo in the rap album category. If they win in January, let’s hope
Freddie puts his son on camera.

Loser: The Grammys’ Ability to Meet the Moment

Recording Academy chair Harvey Mason Jr. opened the nomination

ceremony by noting that 2020 was a year unlike any in the Academy’s
history, with a raging pandemic that has had untold effects on the music
industry and a fight for social and racial justice that has taken on
renewed vigor. Yet his words were hardly reflected in Tuesday’s
nominations. The music of Pop Smoke—the Brooklyn drill artist who
was killed this spring—has dominated charts this year, and his song
“Dior” became a staple at demonstrations across the country. Lil Baby’s
“The Bigger Picture” is arguably the best (and easily the biggest) song to
come out of the protest movement this year. Despite their impact, these
artists were relegated to the rap category.

Award ceremonies are meaningless, ultimately. The Grammys have never

understood rap music. (Hell, they’ve barely understood popular music at
times.) But an awards show should at least attempt to reflect the current
moment. The Academy had every opportunity to do that this year, but it
failed to tap into the music that resonated most in 2020. It makes you
wonder why we even bother to track this ceremony.

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