Grammy Snubs and Surprises: ABBA and Mary J. Blige Get Love; Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen and ‘Encanto,’ Not So Much

The biggest surprise about the 2023 Grammy nominations, which were announced early Tuesday, is that it was shorter on surprises than in most years. That’s a good thing, if you’re remembering the furor over the Weeknd getting zero nominations two years ago at a time when he was expected to be a dominating force. Or maybe it’s a disappointing thing, if you look forward to those years — like this last one — in which a Jon Batiste comes along and dominates the whole thing, after being not so much as a footnote in the lead-up prognostication.

This year, just about everyone had Adele, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Harry Styles, Brandi Carlile and Lizzo on their bingo cards, and they weren’t wrong.

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But there were still enough “huh?” omissions or pop-ups to fuel either a sense of delight or (as is customary with the Grammys) righteous anger. A few head-scratchers:

SNUB: Bad Bunny, Rosalia and Latin crossover. Wasn’t this supposed to be the year where the line blurred a little more between the Grammys and the Latin Grammys? Bad Bunny did get his due in the album of the year category for “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the year’s biggest blockbuster, and a very, very rare example of the Recording Academy nominating a non-English-language album in that category. But astonishingly for an artist who has dominated the past two years, it was one of only two nominations — the other in the pop solo performance category for the song “Moscow Mule.” He was completely absent in the Latin music categories, which would seem to be less a result of the Academy being ignorant of his success than members who are expert in and vote in those Latin categories having more rarefied tastes; or simply a case of acting as if the Latin Grammys represent the genre while the “gringo Grammys,” as Bunny has called them, are for different genres of music.

Snubbed in even more dramatic fashion was Rosalia, who released one of the year’s most innovative albums with “Motomami” (and a blockbuster tour) but only picked up a pair of nominations for best music film and best Latin rock/alternative album.

SURPRISE: Bonnie Raitt is back. Once ageist in favor of older performers, the Grammys have swung the opposite direction for years now — no matter how much people love, say, a new Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen album, voters generally seem to feel that those artists have already gotten their flowers. So it was a bit of a shock to see Raitt, who dominated the Grammys for a couple of years as the ’80s turned over into the ’90s, back in one of the top three categories, and getting acknowledged in four categories in all. Raitt was nominated for song of the year (for “Just Like That”) as well as best Americana album, best American roots song and best Americana performance. Notably, out of the 10 tunes that are up for the all-genre song of the year award, Raitt’s is the only one to have been penned by a songwriter working by herself. Couldn’t be a generational thing, could it?

SNUB: Zach Bryan is almost as ignored by the Grammys as he was by the CMAs. The other day, relative newcomer-turned-superstar Bryan caused quite a stir when he went up on Twitter against the CMA Awards, which had denied him any nominations, let alone wins, even though he was by almost any estimation the country breakout artist of 2022. The mercurial artist, who has come to be big by going outside the normal channels, said he was glad not to be considered for the CMAs and wouldn’t ever want to be part of the awards or show in the future. But when someone asked if he felt the same way about the Grammys, he indicated that was a way-different thing. And he seemed destined for it — the chances that he would not have gotten nominated for best new artist amid a field of 10 seemed about zilch. Yet he came up short there somehow, landing his sole nod for best country performance for “Something in the Air.” He may have to keep himself warm with the adoration of the thousands of fans who scream every word of every song on tour each night.

RELATED SNUB: Country, generally. If country is far and away one of the most popular forms of music in America, there is absolutely no indication of that in the top four all-genre categories, where, out of 40 possible slots for someone from or around Nashville to slip in, the number of country performers who actually did was… zero. Typically, even if the country community doesn’t slip someone in for album, record or song of the year, there’ll still at least be a new artist candidate that gets in. This year, country had two very strong candidates in the aforementioned Bryan and Lainey Wilson, who just won best new artist as well as best female vocalist at the CMAs. How did these two both miss out in favor of more obscure acts like DOMi & JD Beck, Samara Joy and Tobe Nwigwe? It may be time for the Nashville membership to team up for some bloc voting, in light of this underrepresentation.

SNUB: “Encanto” deserves mas. As the Grammys have worked strenuously to move out of the geriatric stance that marred much of the awards’ first three decades, musicals have been a victim of collateral damage. The ubiquitous “Frozen” anthem “Let It Go” — which indisputably contains sterling hallmarks of a pop song — only won a visual-media award, and even the cultural juggernaut “Hamilton” won only a best musical theatre award. And “Hamilton” auteur Lin-Manuel Miranda’s latest opus, “Encanto,” which includes another one of those ubiquitous songs in “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” may have suffered not only from that but also the Latin-snub described above — with one of the year’s biggest singles being relegated to soundtrack and visual media categories.

SURPRISE: ABBA and Mary J. may not take it all, but the Academy really loves them. Last year, it seemed like a fluke when a semi-reunited ABBA got their first Grammy nomination ever, for record of the year, for “I Still Have Faith in You.” But this year, some 52 years after they formed, the foursome came through in two out of the tree top categories, with nods for best album (“Voyage”), record of the year (the album cut “Don’t Shut Me Down”) and best new artist (OK, that last one is a joke). There are a couple of explanations for this, the most likely of them being that ABBA’s music has always been of such a high songwriting, production and performance standard that the screening committee of experts (not to be confused with the nominating committees, which were eliminated last year) compared them with the other potential nominees and said yep, ABBA really are that great. And another, less technically related factor is what we’ll call the living lifetime achievement award (see Bonnie Raitt, circa 1990, above, or Steely Dan circa 2000), where the Academy voters rally around a legendary but inadequately recognized veteran artist’s latest album and collectively seems to say, “It’s time…”

Similarly, few would probably rank Mary J. Blige’s latest, “Good Morning Beautiful,” as among the best of her storied career — which has garnered her nine Grammys from 31 nominations. But apparently hearing that unmistakable voice tugged at the heartstrings of enough voters to garner her six nods.

SNUBS: New artists. It was a rare wide-open year for the best new artist category, which in recent years has had a Rodrigo or Eilish dominating the field. While this year’s cast is certainly musically diverse — ranging from Brazilian dynamo Anitta to British alt-rock eccentrics Wet Leg, from jazzers Domi & JD Beck to Italian rockers Maneskin and rappers Latto, Tobe Nwigwe and Muni Long, some of the year’s biggest pop breakthroughs — including Em Beihold, Dove Cameron, Gayle (who did get a best song nod) and Lauren Spencer-Smith were left off.

SURPRISE?: No place for hate. Two of the biggest artists in the world, Morgan Wallen and Kanye West, have found themselves at the center of the cultural conversation about race deliberately or not — and are up for no awards: West’s name appears only in a list of songwriter of the year nominee The-Dream’s list of credits (West will not share that award); Wallen’s is not listed at all.

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