Esperanza Spalding Wins Best Jazz Vocal Album at 2022 Grammys

In one of the biggest upsets in Grammy history, jazz bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding won best new artist at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 13, 2011. She came out on top in a strong field that also included Justin Bieber, Drake, Florence + the Machine and Mumford & Sons.

Spalding hasn’t lost her winning touch. At the 64th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday (April 3), she won her fifth career Grammy – best jazz vocal album for her eighth studio album, Songwrights Apothecary Lab.

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Spalding has won more Grammys than any of her long-ago rivals for best new artist. Drake has won four, Bieber and Mumford & Sons have each won two. Florence + the Machine is the only best new artist nominee that year that has yet to win, despite six nominations over the years.

Drake might conceivably have added to his Grammy collection this year, but he declined his two nominations (after the nominations had been announced). His Certified Lover Boy was nominated for best rap album. “Way 2 Sexy” (featuring Future and Young Thug) was nominated for best rap performance. The Recording Academy withdrew the nominations at his request.

Spalding had won twice previously for best jazz vocal album, for Radio Music Society (2012) and 12 Little Spells (2019). She also won best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocalist(s) for “City of Roses,” a track from Radio Music Society.

Spalding’s best new artist win was seen by some cynics as a sign that the Grammys were out of touch or maybe even that the winners were manipulated. Actually, it just proved that the category is open to artists from an incredibly wide range of genres. Spalding is still succeeding in her world. So are that year’s other best new artist nominees in theirs.

When John Legend, a previous best new artist winner, and Jewel, a previous nominee in that category, called Spalding’s name out as the winner 11 years ago, the camera caught Drake joining many in the audience to stand and applaud, and an impossibly young-looking Bieber (looking very dapper in a white dinner jacket) clapping.

Spalding accepted the award with these words: “Wow … First, thank you to the Academy for even nominating me in this category … I take this honor to heart and I’ll do my damndest to make a whole lot of great music for all of you.”

Sunday night’s results show that Grammy voters think she has lived up to that promise.

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