The Grammy awards have been a staple in music since 1959 when the first Grammy awards were televised for the world to see. With the 61st Grammy Awards just around the corner, I thought it would be good to look at some of the nominations and give you my predictions.
This year, there are a total of 84 categories that artists are nominated for. Today, we’ll only be looking at the general field which consists of the four biggest awards: Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year and New Artist of the Year. Without further to-do, let’s hop into what I think the Grammy awards have in store for us.
Album of the year nominees:
- Invasion of Privacy (Cardi B)
- By The Way, I Forgive (Brandi Carlile)
- Scorpion (Drake)
- H.E.R (H.E.R)
- Beerbongs and Bentleys (Post Malone)
- Dirty Computer (Janelle Monae)
- Golden Hour (Kacey Musgraves)
- Black Panther (Various Artists)
My Prediction: Scorpion (Drake)
If 2018 belonged to any artist, it belonged to Drake. In 2018 alone, Drake attained three solo number one hit songs with “God’s Plan”, “Nice For What”, and “In My Feelings”, was featured in many high-charting songs like Travis Scott’s “SICKO MODE” and Bad Bunny’s “MIA”, and broke the Beatle’s record for most top 10 songs in a year. Scorpion, his latest project, released June 29 and debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard charts. The albums first week sales were astonishing as he moved 732,000 album units, which is the highest first-week sales of 2018. Scorpion’s domination on the charts deserves to earn the award for album of the year.
Song of the year nominees:
- All The Stars (Kendrick Lamar and SZA)
- Boo’d Up (Ella Mai)
- God’s Plan (Drake)
- In My Blood (Shawn Mendes)
- The Joke (Brandi Carlile)
- The Middle (Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey)
- Shallow (Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper)
- This is America (Childish Gambino)
My Prediction: This is America (Childish Gambino)
The award for Song of the Year is an award that recognizes all the great songwriters that help express a message through music. With that being said, the writing on Childish Gambino “This is America” and overall message of the song beats out the rest of the songs in the category. Gambino’s “This is America” focuses on gun violence in America and has a polarizing video to help paint a more vivid image. With an issue as sensitive as gun violence, I applaud Gambino’s courage to deliver such a powerful message in a simple way.
Record of the year:
- I Like It (Cardi B, Bad Bunny, J Balvin)
- The Joke (Brandi Carlile)
- This is America (Childish Gambino)
- God’s Plan (Drake)
- Shallow (Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper)
- All The Stars (Kendrick Lamar and SZA)
- rockstar (Post Malone and 21 Savage)
- The Middle (Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey)
My Prediction: God’s Plan (Drake)
As I said earlier, Drake was one of, if not the biggest artist of 2018. One of the reasons that he had a successful 2018 was because of his number one hit song “God’s Plan”. The song has become one of the most popular songs ever on Spotify as it clocked in more than 1.1 billion streams in less than a year. To add on to that, the music video for “God’s Plan” racked in 949 million views all in less than a year. This record had the biggest impact in 2018 and is my pick for Record of the Year.
Best new artist:
- Chloe X Halle
- Luke Combs
- Greta Van Fleet
- H.E.R
- Dua Lipa
- Margo Price
- Bebe Rexha
- Jorja Smith
My Prediction: H.E.R
Even though she might not put up the streaming numbers like Dua Lipa or Bebe Rexha, Gabi Wilson, or widely known as H.E.R, wins this category when looking at how talented of an artist she is. H.E.R, which stands for Having Everything Revealed, is already showing everyone why she is a powerhouse R&B artist who is here to stay. Along with being nominated for Record of the Year and Album of the Year, H.E.R is also nominated for three out of five awards in the R&B category; Best R&B performance with “Best Part”, Best R&B song with “Focus” and best R&B album with “H.E.R”. Hopefully, Wilson can capture the Best New Artist along with a few other awards.
Evan Naemura, Online editor
