SZA Leads Grammy Nominations: Female Artists and “Barbie” Take Center Stage

2023-11-10 19:57:23

The R&B and soul singer SZA obtained on Friday, with nine categories, the most nominations for the next Grammy Awards, the awards of the American music industry, which honored female artists and the essential “Barbie”.

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With her hit “Kill Bill”, inspired by the films of Quentin Tarantino, and her second album “SOS”, SZA, 34, will be able to try to win the Grammy in key categories such as song and recording on February 4 in Los Angeles. of the year, as well as best album.

Revealed by her first studio opus “Ctrl” in 2017, SZA has since established herself as a big name in R&B and has collaborated with hip-hop heavyweights like Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

Competition will mainly come from other female artists, such as pop steamroller from country Taylor Swift (6 categories), former Disney muse Olivia Rodrigo, “revelation of the year” 2022 who released an album – “Guts » – highly acclaimed by critics (6 categories), or even Billie Eilish (6), rocker Phoebe Bridgers (7, including 6 with her supergroup boygenius) and rising R&B star Victoria Monét (7).

Taylor Swift in History?

Taylor Swift breaks all records with her albums re-recorded to recover the rights, and her “Eras Tour”, which promises to be the first to exceed a billion dollars in revenue and whose film adaptation also filled the theaters obscure.

She might make history a little more if she wins the album of the year award with her tenth album “Midnights”, which would make her the artist who has won this category the most times, the most prestigious. She would surpass Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder, already crowned, like her, three times.

But at the 66th Grammy Awards on February 4 in Los Angeles, the other phenomenon to watch will be the cinema blockbuster “Barbie”, whose soundtrack titles “What was I made for?” (Billie Eilish) and “Dance The Night” (Dua Lipa) compete for song of the year, once morest “Anti-Hero” (Taylor Swift) and the energetic “Vampire” (Olivia Rodrigo). Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster took over the category of best song for a visual media, with four titles out of the five nominated. In total, “Barbie” has eleven nominations.

In 2023, the ceremony crowned Beyoncé, who became the most awarded artist with a total of 32 awards throughout her career, but the supreme prize for album of the year had escaped her in favor of British popstar Harry Styles .

Evolution

“Women have made some damn good music, some of the best records and songs of the year,” Harvey Mason Jr., executive director of the Recording Academy, the organization that represents music professionals, told the Los Angeles Times. the American music industry and organizes the Grammy Awards.

“Our voters were clearly convinced,” he rejoiced, while the institution has often been criticized for the lack of diversity of the awarded artists, with an imbalance in favor of men.

This week, the former boss of the Recording Academy, Neil Portnow, was the target of a complaint in New York, accused of having drugged and raped, in 2018, a female artist who remained anonymous.

The complaint also accuses the Recording Academy of negligence. The organization and Neil Portnow have vehemently denied the accusations.

While pop and R&B take the lion’s share, rock and hip-hop will have to fight their battles in genre-specific categories. Thus, the Rolling Stones can hope to win a gramophone sixty years following their formation, with “Angry” (best rock song category).

In the leading group of nominations also appear the sound engineer Serban Ghenea (7 categories) who mixed Taylor Swift’s album “Midnight”, the jazzman Jon Batiste (6), and the country singer-songwriters Brandy Clark (6) or pop Miley Cirus (6).

The charismatic Jon Batiste, who triumphed in 2022 (best album in particular), is the only male artist to compete in the premier categories of recording and album of the year.

As for producer Jack Antonoff, he also received six nominations for his work with Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey.

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