Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Rodrigo have swept Grammy nominations with their releases “Midnights,” “Guts” and “What Was I Made For” popping up in just about every major category. With the nominations released last Friday, they have caused quite a debate over who will take home Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year. However, more niche categories are not to be overlooked with major stars popping up in categories like Best Traditional Pop Vocal with Laufey’s “Bewitched,” or Best Immersive Audio with stars like Alicia Keys and Madison Beer.
History was made with this release of Grammy nominees, as Taylor Swift officially has the most nominations in the Song of the Year category:seven across her career. This surpasses stars like Lional Richie and Sir Paul McCartney, who each have six nominations in the category. “What Was I Made For,” Billie Eilish’s song for “Barbie,” has landed nominations in six categories, alongside Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album “Guts”, Taylor Swift’s “Midnights”, while SZA has nine nominations for her album “SOS.”
Keeping personal biases out of their Grammy winner predictions is quite the challenge: though I believe Taylor will take home Record of the Year for “Anti-Hero,” which has garnered over a billion streams, my fellow Swifties and I should realize that “Guts” will most likely take home Album of the Year. For me, Laufey has no competition in the Best Traditional Pop Vocal category, as her latest album “Bewitched” garnered hundreds of millions of streams on its release date, the biggest drop for a jazz album in Spotify’s history. Trying to pick between SZA’s “Kill Bill,” Olivia Rodrgio’s “Vampire” and Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” for Song of the Year is difficult, but no Olivia or Taylor fan can deny that “Kill Bill” was not only the song of the summer, but has unmatched across social media. Alongside Phoebe Briders, SZA will most likely take home Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Ghost in the Machine”. Showing some love for Miley Cyrus and her hit single “Flowers,” I think she’ll take home Best Pop Solo Performance.
Olivia Rodgrigo and “Ballad of a Homeschool Girl” surprisingly took a nomination seat in the Best Rock Song category, which many would agree she’ll take home. Alongside happy surprises with this set of nominations, Noah Khanh’s nomination in Best New Artist had myself and many others hoping for his win.
“What Was I Made For”will sweep categories like Best Music Video and Best Song Written for Visual Media. This comes alongside the second coming of “Barbenheimer” since the two films soundtracks will battle it out in categories like Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, though I could hardly bring myself to choose just one.
