Well, for the most part, it was out with the old and in with the (fairly) new when the Grammy nominations were announced last night. With 8 nominations for Lil’ Wayne, 7 for Radiohead and Coldplay, and 6 apiece for Jay-Z, Kanye West and Ne-Yo, the hipness quotient got raised quite a bit. There were also a couple of surprise shutouts, as Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige, both Grammy favorites, got relegated to minor categories despite two of the biggest selling albums released during the eligibility period. There were a ton of surprises. Here are a couple of them.
*Ne-Yo for Album of the Year: An album that kind of slipped by unnoticed on the critical scale, Ne-Yo’s third album is sharing space with Lil’ Wayne, Radiohead and likely winner Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for Album of the Year. Pretty impressive.
*Where’s Leona Lewis for Best New Artist? “Bleeding Love” got nominated for Record of the Year and Leona got a nod for Best Female Pop Performance, but she got beat out by Duffy, Adele (who scored a surprise nomination for Record of the Year), The Jonas Brothers (!!!), Lady Antebellum and Jazmine Sullivan (with an unexpected 5 nominations) for this award.
*AC/DC gets nominated for Best Rock Performance, Group: Not so much a surprise, but I bet our own Mikey Hersh just peed his pants.
There are plenty of other surprises-and surprise omissions-but you’ll just have to rifle through the list of nominations yourself.
