Expect to hear Taylor Swift and The Weeknd mentioned a lot when the Grammy nominations are announced in early December.
“Uptown Funk!” by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars is the front-runner for Record of the Year. The sleek and snazzy single is the year’s biggest hit.
Three albums seem like sure things—Swift’s 1989, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness.
This has been a good year for country, so one or more country albums could make the finals.
The strongest contenders are Sam Hunt’s Montevallo, Little Big Town’s Pain Killer, Kacey Musgraves’ Pageant Material and Luke Bryan’s Kill the Lights. Hunt’s album has spawned three #1 hits on the country chart, more than any other album this year. I think it
has the strongest shot.
Don Henley and James Taylor, two respected veterans (and past MusiCares Person of the Year honorees), may fight it out for the fifth slot.
There are also many other strong hip-hop candidates that could conceivably join Lamar in the finals. A nomination for Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint would allow the Grammys to one-up the VMAs, where the omission of “Anaconda” from the Video of the Year category prompted complaints (from Minaj, mostly).
A nomination for Dr. Dre’s Compton would recognize the impressive success of the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton, which has become the top-grossing movie biopic.
Drake has two mixtapes in the running: If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (the first 2015 album to sell 1 million copies) and the new What a Time to Be Alive (a collabo with Future).
Drake won a Grammy for Best Rap Album for his second studio album, Take Care,
but he’s never been nominated for Album of the Year.
Other rap albums that are in the running include Wale’s The Album about Nothing and J. Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive.
The panel may want to recognize Nick Jonas’ surprising and convincing emergence as a solo star with a nomination for Nick Jonas.
D’Angelo & the Vanguard’s Black Messiah drew rave reviews (and a 95 score at Metacritic) when it was released late last year. D’Angelo’s previous album, 2000’s Voodoo, won a Grammy as Best R&B Album. One bad sign: Black Messiah has fallen off the charts.
It wasn’t a great year for rock. Even so,
several rock albums are contenders: Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color, Florence + the Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, Fall Out Boy’s American Beauty/American Psycho, Tame Impala’s Currents, Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways, Of Monsters and Men’s Beneath the Skin and Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface.
My five picks are Taylor Swift’s 1989, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness, Sam Hunt’s Montevallo and Don Henley’s Cass County.
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