The next Grammys are scheduled for January 31, 2022. These kudos are handed out by the Recording Academy, an organization made up of music insiders from across the industry. The nominees for Album of the Year — along with Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, and several genre awards — were previously decided by secretive nomination review committees, but the academy eliminated those for this awards season. Scroll down for our latest racetrack odds, which are based on the combined predictions of Gold Derby users. Those odds are constantly changing, so we’ll be updating this list throughout the season.
Predictably, the nominations under the committee system were often controversial. At the 2021 awards, for instance, The Weeknd didn’t get a single nomination despite a critically acclaimed, chart-topping album (“After Hours”) and a song (“Blinding Lights”) so wildly popular that Billboard ranked it as their number-one single of the year. The Weeknd accused the academy of corruption, echoing the frustrations of other artists like Halsey and Drake, and he ultimately announced that he would boycott the awards altogether.
The academy has additionally faced blowback for biases against women and Black artists, though the Grammys have made efforts to expand their membership in addition to dropping the committees. They also expanded their top four general field categories from five nominations to eight starting with the awards held in 2019 (and expanded again to 10 nominations this year), and we’ve had three acclaimed female winners in a row (Kacey Musgraves‘s “Golden Hour,” Billie Eilish‘s “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” and Taylor Swift‘s “Folklore”), as well as the first-ever rap song to win Record and Song of the Year (Childish Gambino‘s “This is America“). Nevertheless, allegations of questionable voting practices persisted.
All that could influence who wins and how those winners are perceived by the industry at large. Who do you think voters will gravitate to in this year’s contest now that the nominations have been announced?
UPDATED: April 3, 2022
