The nominations for the 58th Grammy Awards have been announced. Alicia Keys – a 15-time Grammy award winner herself – revealed the illustrious list live on CBS This Morning on Monday.
Among the numerous deserving but predictable nominations (our girl Taylor Swift has been nominated lots, of course!) there are some glaring omissions across the 83 music categories this year.
Here’s who is in and who is out:
We’re cheering on The Weeknd, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar – featured in our run down of the best albums of 2015 – who will all go head-to-head with Chris Stapleton and Alabama Shakes for Album of the Year.
Taylor is also nominated for Song of the Year for her anthem, ‘Blank Space’. In fact, she is up for seven Grammys including Record of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Duo/Group performance for ‘Bad Blood’ (featuring Wiz Kahlifa), which was also nominated for Best Music Video – a nomination that we couldn’t condone more if we tried.
Kendrick Lamar has also raked in the nominations. He's got the most out of any artist this year, with a whopping eleven nominations. He’s up for Song of the Year for ‘Alright’. Kendrick will be competing with Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s ‘See You Again’ – the soundtrack to Fast and Furious and the song that has become synonymous with Paul Walker’s tragic death earlier this year – in this category.
Ed Sheeran has done well out of this year’s nominations too. ‘Thinking Out Loud’ is up for three awards: Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. Abel Tesfaye of The Weeknd also has several nominations: the club tune, ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ is in the shortlist for Record of the Year and his album, 'Beauty Behind the Madness’ has swept up acclaim across categories.
Other notable inclusions in the running for the most coveted musical medals are: D’Angelo and the Vanguard, Jamie XX, Florence + the Machine, Wolf Alice, Tame Impala, Bjork and The Chemical Brothers, not to mention Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars with the song that forced everyone to get up and dance in 2k15, ‘Uptown Funk’.
James Bay and Meghan Trainor have been nominated for the prestigious Best New Artist award and will be competing with Australian wild card Courtney Barnett as well as Sam Hunt and Tori Kelly for the much-desired golden gong.
Sadly, some songstresses are going without this year; Beyonce and Rihanna don’t have a nomination between them and Lana Del Ray only swiped one. 80s icons Madonna and Prince both released albums in 2015 in spectacular comeback style but haven’t made the grade for the Grammys. And before everyone freaks out, Adele's music comeback was a case of bad timing as entries for the 58th Grammy Awards closed in September. Otherwise we're sure she'd have got a shout out.
And what about the music video sensation of our time? Drake’s 'Hotline Bling' is nowhere to be seen. ELLE thinks this calls for a new category: Best Music Video Meme. Watch this space for the petition.
Words by Francesca Donovan
