The 2021 Grammy Nominations

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Kat Keller, Journalist

That time of year has finally rolled around again, the full list of Grammy nominations for the 63rd annual award show in 2021 have been released by the Recording Academy. It is easy to say that expectations for this year’s list were all over the place with the pandemic taking over the music industry. With current conditions making it amazingly difficult for small artists to make their big breakouts, or at least ones that survive past becoming a quarantine trend, to some of the biggest names in music releasing some of their most sensational works that easily made history and marked a peak in their discography. The Grammys also upheld their pledge to diversify their program, keeping to the promises of the Diversity & Inclusion Task Force that met in March of 2018 to insure equality within underrepresented communities in the music industry and left all tolerance for any bias or barriers at the door. Needless to say, this year’s list of nominations are incredibly controversial and leave listeners all over the world baffled. Dedicated music enthusiast and pop culture connoisseur Kimia Malkami, a Junior at CdM, tells all about her thoughts on the matter.

“Ok, well The Weeknd was heinously robbed”, She starts. The After Hours singer wasn’t nominated, despite his mass popularity and circulating album that reigned remarkably successful. Songs like, “Blinding Lights” had been playing everywhere you could listen, on the radio, in retail stores, on social media. It was baffling to see the artist had received no nominations at all this year. “Justin Bieber did not deserve any nominations, let alone for album of the year,” Kimia continues. Bieber’s song “Yummy” had been nominated in the category for Best Pop Solo Performance against songs like Swift’s “Cardigan” and Styles’ ”Watermelon Sugar”. It was a popular opinion that “Yummy” shouldn’t have been nominated solely because it paled in comparison to the other aforementioned songs in the category. Kimia also talks about how, “Coldplay definitely should’ve not been nominated for album of the year and Fiona Apple deserved the Spot for Fetch the Bolt Cutters, she made one of the greatest albums in the past few years. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the first album since My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West to get a perfect review by Pitchfork and it’s heinous that she didn’t get any nominations. ‘Punisher’ by Phoebe Bridgers also deserved a spot.” There seem to have been more snubs this year than anything else, so many mainstream artists who didn’t necessarily make anything all too great took away from many other deserving musicians. “All in all, the Grammys are corrupted and biased because they snubbed some of the true greatest albums of the years for things the academy always goes for, like Coldplay.”