The Grammys got a little more predictable this year — which was good, if you have a bookie, or if you’e a journalist who’s been sulking for years over your consistent failure rate in prognosticating these things. Much of it comes down to the nominating committees having been abolished this year after being gatekeepers for the last quarter-century. For better or worse, the new field was without the famous “committee picks” that used to shake things up… and squeeze out more obvious choices like the Weeknd and Ed Sheeran.
So thank God for Jon Batiste for coming in and making us turn off our snooze alarm as the nominations unfolded Tuesday morning that, unbeknownst to us all, he was actually the music phenomenon of 2020. (The general public may not have known, but New Orleans understood.) As for the rest of our snubs and surprises, they weren’t always all that shocking, even if we were making predictions for BTS to finally land a nod for record of the year, in our heart of hearts we knew it wasn’t going to happen yet. We took our real shocks where we could find them: inside Batiste’s horn of plenty, mainly.
SURPRISE: Jon Batiste leads with 11 nominations
Should, or could, we have seen this coming? There are different outside factors you could attribute his sudden Grammy success to. Like friendship — how many recording artists of any note hasn’t the well-liked “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” band leader rubbed elbows with during his tenure? And those older voters who favor “real musicianship” (and some younger ones, too) finally got their muzzles taken off this year and weren’t subject to committee gatekeepers trying to ensure that the Grammys look hep and edgy. But in fact, Batiste’s popularity isn’t just a music industry phenomenon. Coming into these nominations, his infectious record of the year candidate “Freedom,” filmed on location in his native New Orleans, had 4.9 million YouTube views just for the official music video, not counting other versions. Those aren’t K-pop numbers, but it’s not bad for a jazz cat.
SNUB: BTS gets one nomination… again
Nobody puts Baby in a corner, but the Grammys are content to put BTS in one semi-niche category. Despite predictions that this would be the year they’d be up for record of the year, BTS had to settle for a lone nod in pop duo/group performance for “Butter”… the same consolation prize handed to “Dynamite” last year.