The Best and Worst Songs Nominated for a Grammy This Year
Every year the Grammys are Lucy and we music fans are a collective Charlie Brown hoping to finally kick the football. They'll always let you down because their metric for who is deserving of an award is rooted in what is commercially successful, not what is musically innovative. From our view, they get it wrong every year! But sometimes they get it sort of right! So according to our righteous and critical perspective (lol), here are the best and worst songs nominated for Grammys this year.
Best
Deafheaven - “Honeycomb”
Best Metal Performance
For a while, the members of Deafheaven had a running joke about winning a Grammy: “Like, someone comes up with a good riff and it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s our Grammy winner,’” vocalist George Clarke told Pitchfork. Like a lot of things with this band, what might have once seemed absurd has now morphed into something strangely real. Maybe next they can joke about playing the Super Bowl. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Deafheaven, “Honeycomb”
Drake - “Nice for What”
Best Rap Performance
You know how American Sniper became the highest grossing film of 2014 despite its use of an almost satirically fake-looking prop baby? That’s kind of how Drake’s Scorpion feels in retrospect. But for Drake (and Clint Eastwood), sometimes you are so in touch with a segment of the population that literally nothing can bring you down. Released before You Are Hiding a Child-gate and sounding just as untouchable now, “Nice for What” is the triumphant sound of believing this truth to be self-evident. –S.S.
Listen: Drake, “Nice for What”
Sufjan Stevens - “Mystery of Love”
Best Song Written for Visual Media
It’s good to see that Grammy voters are also still laying alone at night, weeping, as they imagine Call Me By Your Name hunks Elio and Oliver running through the Alps as Sufjan whisper-croons. In a category that tends to reward razzmatazz musicals and saccharine animated films, it’s a relief to see Sufjan Stevens’ humble, gorgeous falsetto recognized. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Sufjan Stevens, “Mystery of Love”
Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper - “Shallow”
Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Pop Group Performance, Best Song Written for Visual Media
As sure as Jackson Maine will always want to take another look at you, “Shallow” was bound to be nominated for a Grammy. (It’s actually nominated for four, which is one more than Ally was nominated for in the film. Take that, cinema.) It’s got it all: a girl living in the modern word, a boy keeping it so hardcore, a vague existential crisis with a sick riff. What will happen if it doesn’t win anything? The darkest “Oh, HOOOOH Oh HOAAHHOOAHHOAAAH” imaginable. –Q.M.
Listen: Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper, “Shallow”
Travis Scott - “Sicko Mode” [ft. Drake]
Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song
As you read this, there is a 16 year old from Iowa creating a shoot-dancing Triller video to “Sicko Mode.” I don’t blame them, it’s an irresistible song that features Drake taking a nap thanks to a small dose of Xanax, Travis Scott inventing the beat switch (I’m kidding, he didn’t), and every producer ever on a single track, even your cousin who keeps DMing you a link to his lo-fi Bandcamp beat tape. That’s more than enough for a Grammy. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Travis Scott, “Sicko Mode”
St. Vincent: “Masseduction”
Best Rock Song
Very cool of all the baby boomers in the Recording Academy to nominate the title track off St. Vincent’s 2017 record—which is absolutely about dominatrix culture and queer subjectivity. The hook goes, “I can’t turn off what turns me on,” and there are two different references about how going to church is hot. This is in the running against weird, soulless ghoul acts that write equally ghoulish music. Here’s hoping Annie Clark goes full camp and revives the toilet costume for her Grammy performance, in effect confusing all the normies. –Sophie Kemp
Listen: St. Vincent, “Masseduction”
Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey - “The Middle”
Best Pop Group Performance
“The Middle” is essentially the sleeker new model of Zedd and Alessia Cara’s “Stay,” its chorus perfectly engineered to ricochet off the walls of your skull for eternity. Best Pop Group Performance might seem like an odd category considering Maren Morris is the only voice heard on the track, which boasts three featured producers and seven writers in total. But massive pop hits take a village, and her voice delivers every time, with and without the enormous stacks of vocoders. Big mood. (Still.) –Noah Yoo
Listen: Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey, “The Middle”
Virtual Self - “Ghost Voices”
Best Dance Recording
Inspired by the Eurodance and trance sounds of his youth, spent playing “Dance Dance Revolution,” Porter Robinson came up with the alter ego Virtual Self. Turns out a side-project love letter to “DDR” is what got the wildly successful DJ his first Grammy nomination—but for good reason. “Ghost Voices” is the most inspired nominee among the bunch here, which also includes Disclosure’s “Ultimatum” and Silk City and Dua Lipa’s “Electricity,” among others. Jackin’ house rhythms and DnB-tinged bass give way to massive trance breakdowns, a reimagination of rave music history in four minutes. –N.Y.
Listen: Virtual Self, “Ghost Voices”
H.E.R. - “Focus”
Best R&B Song
When Rihanna used H.E.R.’s “Focus” in a slow-motion Instagram video, it was enough to make the most casual Robyn Fenty fan scream. The sensual sleeper hit elevated a selfie to a music video: Ri sits in a moving car, her hair flowing ethereally in the wind, while the sound of H.E.R.’s breathy voice trickles in like sunlight. The slow-burning “Focus” was enough to turn folks’ attention away from the Bad Gal for a sec while they wondered, “What’s that song?” Few have forgotten it since. –Michelle Kim
Listen: H.E.R., “Focus”
Arctic Monkeys - “Four Out of Five”
Best Rock Performance
Alex Turner wrote a vaudevillian rock jingle about a taqueria on the moon that has good Yelp reviews, essentially. But the song takes the extremely cheeky idea of being kind of a narcissist about owning a restaurant (in space!), and turns it into a not so subtle critique of pop culture as a success-obsessed ouroboros. Feels on point for awards season. –S.K.
Listen: Arctic Monkeys, “Four Out of Five”
Worst
Eminem - “Lucky You” [ft. Joyner Lucas]
Best Rap Song
There’s the moment in an NBA player’s career when it’s noticeable that they’re moving a little slower, shots aren’t falling, and their game no longer fits in the current era. In hip-hop, that was Eminem about a decade ago. Now, he’s busy clinging to preachy collaborators—hey, Joyner Lucas—using puns written for the days when his nemesis was Christina Aguilera, and still for some reason rapping so damn fast. –A.P.
Listen: Eminem, “Lucky You” [ft. Joyner Lucas]
Childish Gambino - “This Is America”
Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rap/Sung Performance, Best Music Video
The arresting music video for Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” is just about perfect. But the Grammy for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Rap/Sung Performance—all the other categories the song is nominated for—should go to a song that is actually good. There is no “Atlanta” episode strong enough to justify Gambino doing a cartoonish impersonation of modern hip-hop flows and an instrumental that sounds like a high-budget, studio-funded parody of a fancified Atlanta sound. The only way Gambino could have made the song more unbearable was to add in a Tina Fey outro. –A.P.
Listen: Childish Gambino, “This Is America”
Shawn Mendes - “In My Blood”
Song of the Year
“The concept of this song is about how it feels [when] you’re about to give up, and then you don’t,” young heartthrob Shawn Mendes once said of his hit single/minor Fuel flashback “In My Blood.” It’s an evergreen story that’s inspired some of my favorite art ever: the last verse of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Promised Land” and the ending of pretty much every movie ever made about boxing. But this particular pump-up anthem is more like a series of vague gestures, a weary sigh where some words of encouragement should be—how it feels when you’re about to say something, and then you don’t. –S.S.
Listen: Shawn Mendes, “In My Blood”
Bring Me the Horizon - “MANTRA”
Best Rock Song
To its credit, this song checks all the angsty, vaguely sexual “punk” boxes that a Bring Me the Horizon song requires. But of all the possible songs that could have been nominated for Best Rock Song, why pick one that says, “Before the truth will set you free, it’ll piss you off”? This is the hell where Hot Topic and the Grammys converge. –Q.M.
Listen: Bring Me the Horizon, “MANTRA”
Northern Soul - “Above & Beyond” [ft. Richard Bedford]
Best Dance Recording
If only these legends of trance got a nod for a better song. “Above & Beyond” feels so perfunctory, so dated that it could be mistaken for a gag track heard in the background of a skeevy nightclub in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Clunky big-room kick drums preface cheap, pumping synthesizers designed for, like, total bliss and energy, man. All this goes to show that thousands of PLUR-loving ravers across the world are wrong and EDM is dead. –N.Y.
Listen: Northern Soul, “Above & Beyond” [ft. Richard Bedford]
Maroon 5 - “Girls Like You” [ft. Cardi B]
Best Pop Group Performance
It’s telling that on their hit “Girls Like You,” Adam Levine never actually describes what the girl is like. He only really says two things about the subject’s personality: She likes guys 1) who are having fun and 2) are like Adam Levine. The song is like all the other suburban mom-bait that Maroon 5 have been cranking out for over a decade: Levine gives a nasal-forward delivery of a simple funk-inflected melody. Not even Cardi B’s verse can rescue it; next to her explosive charisma, the band looks like dried-out crudités at a party that for some reason, is always there, but no one is ever enthusiastic about. –M.K.
Listen: Maroon 5, “Girls Like You” [ft. Cardi B]
Jay Rock - “WIN” [ft. Kendrick Lamar]
Best Rap Song
“WIN” isn’t obnoxious just because Jay Rock repeats the word “win” 18 times in each chorus. It’s also the fact that he delivers the word with the desperation of a washed high school football coach looking to take the conference championship. And says the phrase “get out the way” like an insecure karaoke rendition of Ludacris’ “Move Bitch.” But somehow, the most hilarious moment comes from Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, when he yelps “mommy!” in a tiny ad-lib. And that’s just the hook! –M.K.
Listen: Jay Rock, “WIN” [ft. Kendrick Lamar]
twenty one pilots - “Jumpsuit”
Best Rock Song
I became more interested in this song when I learned that, lyrically, it stems from an elaborate fictional universe that front-pilot Tyler Joseph invented, centered on the city of Dema, where nine bishops rule the land and personify his various insecurities. It’s the kind of attention to detail and conceptual forethought that made me consider exploring this mega-popular alternative rock band’s catalog. In an instant, I envisioned myself mapping out the geography of Dema, maybe finding a small corner to call my own and settling down with my wife and kids to escape the mostly thankless life of being a blogger. Sadly for me, Dema almost instantly reveals itself to be gated by the impenetrable vocal affectations of Tyler Joseph (example: jumpsuit = “jah sioux”). Life comes flooding back. My fantasies remain just that. –S.S.
Listen: twenty one pilots, “Jumpsuit”
Greta Van Fleet - “Black Smoke Rising”
Best Rock Song
They seem like nice fellows. Good luck to them. –Q.M.
