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. But the eight nominees for Album of the Year — along with Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist and several genre awards — are ultimately decided by secretive nomination review committees, who will decide on the best music released from September 2020 through August 2021. 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 often throughout the season.
Predictably, those nominations are often controversial, raising questions about legitimacy. 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. They also expanded their top four general field categories from five nominations to eight starting with the awards held in 2019, 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 have persisted.
All that could influence who is nominated and how those nominations are perceived by the industry at large. Will the academy make further efforts at reform? Who do you think voters will gravitate to in this year’s contest?
