Women predominate in the main categories such as album of the year and Record of the year, where only one man competes, the jazz prodigy Jon Batiste.
SZA, whose music crosses genres, has 9 nominations and the best chance of winning several gramophones alongside the pop star Billie Eilish, the indie band boygenius and, of course, Swift, who is going for the most important awards.
Olivia Rodrigo, Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monae and Lana Del Rey are also in contention to take home trophies.
If she were to win her fourth album of the year award, Swift would be the first artist to achieve that poker and would leave legends such as Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder behind with three.
It would be the icing on the cake for the 34-year-old artist, who already more than dominates world music.
Swift makes headlines with just the blink of an eye, and also for her romance with American football star Travis Kelce, who will not be able to attend the Grammy ceremony because he is concentrating with his Kansas City Chiefs team to play in the NFL Superbowl next weekend.
The Grammys will also have a high dose of the “Barbie” world, the hit in theaters that earned 11 nominations for outstanding performances, from Eilish, Dua Lipa, rapper Nicki Minaj and Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling.
Ice Spice, a rapper from the New York neighborhood of the Bronx, is competing for an award for her work on “Barbie” and for Best New Artist, a category that experts predict she could win after an exceptional year in which she conquered the internet.
“Work to be done”
That seven of the eight nominees in the album of the year and record of the year categories are women or gender fluid is a huge change that industry analysts see as something that should have happened a long time ago.
Harvey Mason Jr., executive director of The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, spoke to AFP during the weekend’s pre-gala and was “optimistic” about how the nominated women stand out, not as a specific case. but within a broader institutional change.
Grammy organizers have long been accused of being too masculine and predominantly white. However, Mason Jr. said that in the last five years the voting membership committee has added 2,500 new women and now 40% are non-white.
“We are always going to be open to change in voting, we will always try to improve it and see what is happening in music, and in the percentages of what is being created and consumed. We want to make sure that we align with this,” he stated. .
“So we have work to do. Always. We have to have more women, more people of color (non-white, ed.), we have to have more gender diversity, so we will continue to push it,” Mason Jr. stressed.
The nominees for Best New Artist The War and Treaty, the duo made up of husband and wife Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, told AFP that they feel a change but emphasized that much more progress is needed.
“I wish the day would come when it wouldn’t be an aha moment when a woman comes on the radio. It’s not an aha moment when different nationalities come on in country music,” Trotter Jr. said.
And recognition matters, according to Tanya: “Just being nominated for a Grammy puts you in a different setting. It makes you more seen.”
“A complete circle”
It will be a particularly moving evening for Batiste, who triumphed at the 2022 gala while going through a tough personal drama behind the scenes, with his wife, the writer Suleika Jaouad, in the midst of treatment for recurring leukemia.
This time she will be able to accompany him and eventually celebrate with him if he wins any of the nominations, such as Song of the Year for “Butterfly,” which he composed while Jaouad was in the hospital.
“Being able to celebrate the album and that song together, and also be at the Grammys again, this time with her? That’s my favorite part of this,” Batiste confessed to AFP in an interview late last year.
“It’s a complete circle,” he noted.
The vast majority of the 90 trophies are awarded before the televised Grammy gala, in which SZA, Eilish and Rodrigo, among others, will perform.
Nigerian sensation Burna Boy and rapper Travis Scott will also take the stage with others such as country singer Luke Combs, who is expected to perform his hit cover “Fast Car” in the company of four-time Grammy-winning singer Tracy Chapman.
Comedian Trevor Noah, nominated for Best Comedy Album, will present the main Grammy gala, which will be broadcast on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. local time (01:00 GMT on Monday) on the American network CBS.
