63rd Grammy Award Nominees Announced

by Ningning Ying

On November 24th, at 12:00 PM EST, the nominees of the 63rd Grammy Awards were announced. "For more than 62 years, we[The Recording Academy] have been recognizing excellence in music with more than eleven thousand academy voting members. The GRAMMYs represent the only peer-selected award celebrating excellence across 27 fields and over twelve genres. The academy truly represents music at its best." Says Harvey Mason Jr., The Chair and Interim Recording Academy President/CEO.

Harvey Mason Jr. was joined by past GRAMMYs winners, nominees, and talk show hosts in an hour-long livestream where they announced the nominations for all 84 categories of the 2021 GRAMMYs. Popular nominations include BTS' Dynamite, Megan Thee Stallion Feat. Beyoncé's Savage, Billie Eilish's Everything I Wanted, Harry Styles' Watermelon Sugar, Post Malone's Circles, Beyoncé's Black Parade, Doja Cat's Say So, and many more!

While the nominees themselves have expressed joy over the news on social media, the GRAMMYs have received their fair share of criticism from fans and artists alike for this year's nominations.

One of the most notable artists that the GRAMMYs "snubbed" is The Weeknd. Fans anticipated an Album of the Year nomination for his After Hours Album and a Song and Record of the Year nomination for his song Blinding Lights. Fans not only anticipated nominations, but they also predicted that he would win in those categories as well. The fact that The Weeknd was not nominated for anything for this year's GRAMMYs shocked and outraged many. The Weeknd himself tweeted about this situation and wrote, "The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans, and the industry transparency..."

Although BTS’s first English single Dynamite got a nomination for Best Pop/Duo/Group Performance, fans hoped that the global sensation boy band would be a major presence at the GRAMMYs because of the success of their album Map of the Soul: 7, which sold over 4 million copies, broke records, and set new ones. People expected the album to attain a Best Pop Vocal Album nomination and tracks ON and Black-Swan to receive nominations of Record and Song of the Year. BTS's fanbase ARMY was disappointed when they found out that the GRAMMYs did not give the record-breaking album any nominations. Halsey, an artist who collaborated with BTS for their song Boy With Luv tweeted: "Deleting and ignoring all negativity. BTS deserved many nominations. I am, however, unsurprised that they weren’t acknowledged. The US is so far behind on the whole movement. The time will come."

The GRAMMYs, controversial nominations and all, will be broadcast on the CBS Television Network on Sunday, January 31st at 8:00 PM EST. The GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony will also be livestreamed on GRAMMY.com at 3:00 PM EST.

"Despite the fact that I am extremely disappointed that the GRAMMYs have refused to have me sing or be nominated for Best Pop Album, I am thrilled to be hosting this auspicious event," Said Trevor Noah, the South African comedian who was announced to be the host of the 63rd GRAMMYs.