Grammys A Go-Go

One thing we can be 98 percent* sure of when the nominees for the 2022 GRAMMY AWARDS are announced today: The WEEKND will not be among them, and this time it will be his choice, not the RECORDING ACADEMY's. Beyond that, you predict what the Grammys are going to do in any given year at your own peril. The noms, which the Academy will begin rolling out at noon ET, will be the first since Grammy nominators shockingly snubbed the Weeknd's blockbuster 2020 album AFTER HOURS a year ago, causing the Weeknd to boycott the Grammys forever (forever has already lasted a year, which is long as these kinds of forevers go), and seemingly providing the final straw that prompted the Academy give its nominating process a serious makeover. That included disbanding* the secretive nominating committees that had been installed as a corrective for previous Grammy embarrassments (or bungles, if you will, as in jungles), which leaves us to wonder if an overcorrective has been properly corrected this time, or if it really was an overcorrective in the first place, and what will become of future JACOB COLLIERs, BLACK PUMAS and D SMOKEs, to take three random names that no one expected to see at the top of the 2021 ballot until they just kind of showed up there. Answers to come soon.

In the meantime, speculation. One insider told Variety a while back to expect "more Taylor Swifts and fewer Jacob Colliers... People like to be on the winning side, so I think dark horses are really going to fall off—which is bad for more outsider artists like BRANDI CARLILE or H.E.R." And which could be good, Billboard's PAUL GREIN guesses, for commercial pop staples like BTS' "BUTTER" or ED SHEERAN's "BAD HABITS," which are no longer subject to the "snooty" filters of anonymous industry insiders. (The committees were also, according to former Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan, corrupt.) Another possible beneficiary: live versions of songs that otherwise wouldn't be eligible, such as EUROVISION and TIKTOK rock darlings MÅNESKIN, whose glammy cover of the FOUR SEASONS' "BEGGIN'" was the subject of a mini-feature that totally coincidentally was posted on the Grammy.com website Monday night and on its Twitter feed early Tuesday morning. The studio recording was released too early for the Grammy eligibility window but a live version, which has been making the network TV rounds this week, and which is kind of great, is right on time. The committees might have turned up their collective noses at an entry like that, but the nominating and voting masses may not care. But, again, nothing is ever certain, except possibly OLIVIA RODRIGO and LIL NAS X, who virtually every prognosticator of note has penciled in for multiple top nominations. Don't let them down, voters of musical America.

In the meantime, HBO has nominated the Weeknd for a scripted miniseries, the BRIT AWARDS have followed the Grammys' example of a decade ago and eliminated all gendered categories, and the Washington Post happily notes that another rule change has given go-go music the best chance it's ever had to break through at the Grammys.

*Asterisk 1: Though the Weeknd followed through on his threat to not submit any of his work for Grammy consideration, apparently KANYE WEST submitted the Weeknd-featuring song "HURRICANE," which means a Weeknd nomination is still feasible, through no fault of his own.

*Asterisk 2: While the most notorious secret committees, which filtered nominees in the biggest four categories, have been disbanded, other secret committees remain downballot, where the genre-based Grammys are decided.

Rest in Peace

British prog-rocker DAVID LONGDON, lead singer of the band Big Big Train.