2017 Grammy Noms & More

2017 Grammy nominations: Who will come out with the most nominations?

It's Beyoncé versus Adele versus....? While everyone expects Beyoncé and Adele to rack up plenty of Grammy nominations, much of the new class remains a mystery. Will voters fall for Drake's "Views'? Or will they honor a legend like Paul Simon instead? What about a relative newcomer like Chance the Rapper?

Stay tuned.

The nominations for the 2017 Grammys will soon be revealed. The big four categories are slated to be broadcast at 5:30 a.m. PST on "CBS This Morning." At 5:45 a.m. PST, look for the complete list of nominations to land.

We'll be updating with Grammy news all day long.

• Grammy Award nominations are coming — and then, most likely, dissent
• James Corden will replace LL Cool J as host of the 59th Grammy Awards

Beyonce earns nine Grammy nominations, Kanye, Rihanna and Drake get eight and Chance the Rapper makes streaming history

By Randy Lewis

Beyonce at Dodger Stadium in September. (Frank Micelotta / Parkwood Entertainment)

Lightning-rod pop-R&B superstar Beyonce has scored a field-leading nine Grammy Award nominations for her provocative “Formation” single and “Lemonade” album, the Recording Academy announced Tuesday morning. R&B and hip-hop artists Kanye West, Drake and Rihanna are hot on her heels, with eight apiece. And Chance the Rapper is right behind them, with seven nominations his first year in the running.

At the same time, the year’s biggest blockbuster album, Adele’s “25,” yielded five nominations for the British singer-songwriter, with nods in all three of the general categories for which she’s eligible — album, record and song — recognizing her unequaled reach across age, gender and stylistic boundaries with the broad-based appeal of her traditionally rooted pop songs of romantic heartbreak and recovery.

Launching the 2017 awards season with the unveiling of hundreds of nominations over 84 award categories, the Recording Academy cast barely a glance into the rearview mirror of pop music.

Beyoncé, Adele, Mike Posner and more nominated for song of the year Grammy

Adele is nominated for the song of the year Grammy. (Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images)

Beyoncé’s “Formation,” Adele’s “Hello,” Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” and Lukas Graham’s “7 Years” are the song of the year nominees for the 59th Grammy Awards, to be held Feb. 12 at Staples Center. The song of the year is a songwriter’s award.

Kelsea Ballerini, The Chainsmokers, Chance The Rapper and more nominated for best new artist Grammy

Andrew Taggart of the Chainsmokers performs recently in Del Mar. (Chadd Cady / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Kelsea Ballerini, The Chainsmokers, Chance The Rapper, Maren Morris and Anderson .Paak are the best new artist nominees for the 59th Grammy Awards, to be held Feb. 12 at Staples Center.

Rihanna, Adele, Beyoncé, Lukas Graham and Twenty One Pilots nominated for record of the year Grammy

Rihanna performs during her "Anti World Tour" at Barclays Center of Brooklyn in March. (Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Fenty Corp.)

Adele’s “Hello,” Beyoncé’s “Formation,” Lukas Graham’s “7 Years,” Rihanna’s “Work” featuring Drake and Twenty One Pilots’ “Stressed Out” are the Record of the Year nominees for the 59th Grammy Awards, to be held Feb. 12, 2017, at the Staples Center. Record of the year is a production award, given to the artist and the producing/engineering team.

Beyoncé, Adele, Justin Bieber score album of the year Grammy noms

Beyoncé performs April 27 at the opening of her Formation World Tour in Miami. (Frank Micelotta / Parkwood Entertainment)

Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” Adele’s “25,” Justin Bieber’s “Purpose,” Drake’s “Views” and Sturgill Simpson’s’ “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth” are the album of the year nominees for the 59th Grammy Awards, to be held Feb. 12 at Staples Center.

The top categories were unveiled on “CBS This Morning,” with the full list expected to be released at 5:45 a.m.

Grammy Award nominations are coming — and then, most likely, dissent

By Lorraine Ali

Chance the Rapper, seen here performing at the Greek Theatre this year, took his Grammy campaign into his own hands. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The 59th Grammy Awards will kick off the major entertainment awards season when they unveil their nominations Tuesday morning.

And with them will likely come dissent.

The Grammy Awards enjoy a sometimes complicated relationship with the constituency they represent — so much that raising objections is not only expected, it’s something of a yearly pastime, as bankable as slurred acceptance speeches or a bounty of accolades awarded to a vocal talent such as Adele.

This year alone, popular music’s top contenders — Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Chance the Rapper — all publicly challenged the Recording Academy in ways that, say, Meryl Streep or Regina King would never dare their various award academies.

Campaigns for Oscars, Golden Globes or Emmys are carefully choreographed affairs, and though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been rankled recently by accusations of a lack of diversity in its major nominations, the music community has long been outspoken about its views toward the Grammys — personal and political.

Ocean, for instance, refused to submit his critically lauded new work, “Blonde,” for award consideration. West, whose “The Life of Pablo” is in Grammy contention, then threatened to boycott the ceremony on Feb. 12 if Ocean isn’t nominated.

Chance the Rapper, meanwhile, took the opposite route. He boldly lobbied for Grammy love in song and a full page Billboard ad titled “Hey, Why Not Me?”

Yet such jockeying for position and personal boycotts are all part of the Grammys’ appeal.

Chance the Rapper and the rule change that shows how the Grammy Awards are adapting to the era of streaming music

By Mikael Wood

Chance the Rapper performs in Austin, Texas, in 2015. (Lenny Gilmore / RedEye)
Originally published June 16, 2016 

Chance the Rapper made music-business history when his album “Coloring Book” became the first streaming-only release to chart on the Billboard 200.

Next year the Chicago hip-hop star could score another first with his acclaimed record that’s available to stream through services like Apple Music and Spotify but not to purchase as a CD or paid download.

The Recording Academy on Thursday announced changes to rules governing the Grammy Awards, including one that allows streaming-only titles to be considered for music’s most prestigious prize. Such releases were previously ineligible to be nominated, but “it’s clear now that streaming is here and probably here to stay,” said Bill Freimuth, a Recording Academy executive in charge of the Grammys.

“As the academy — as all the academies are — we’re often criticized for being out of step,” Freimuth said. “So we strive very much to be of the moment as much as we can. This was one way to do it.”

The rule change means that “Coloring Book” — a gospel-inflected set that’s earned rave reviews and debuted on Billboard’s chart at No. 8 with approximately 57 million streams — could become the first streaming-only title to win at the 59th Grammy Awards, which will recognize songs and albums released between Oct. 1, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2016. Trophies are to be handed out Feb. 12 in a televised ceremony at Staples Center.

The Recording Academy is following other music-industry gatekeepers in embracing streaming, which last year nearly doubled in use from the year before, according to Nielsen Music. (Spotify, the most popular on-demand streaming service, says it has 30 million paid subscribers; Apple Music, which launched last June, claims 15 million.)

In 2014, Billboard began incorporating streams in the formula that determines its album chart. And early this year the Recording Industry Assn. of America started counting streams toward its gold and platinum awards, which formerly recognized only sales.

Freimuth said it’s important that a Grammy align with other goalposts in the business. But he added that the academy didn’t want to “completely open the floodgates to every 12-year-old singing into a hairbrush on YouTube.”

So the new rule carries some technical specifications: An eligible recording must have audio quality “comparable to at least 16-bit 44.1 kHz,” for instance, and have “a verifiable online release date.”

What to look for with the Grammy nominations? Lots of Adele and Beyoncé

Beyonce performs in 2014 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

One doesn't need a crystal ball to make this Grammy prediction: Expect  Beyoncé's "Lemonade" and Adele's "25" to go head-to-head in major categories, including album of the year.

Beyoncé, as The Times wrote earlier this year, has become a culture-defining presence who transcends her music.

While wave after wave of pop sensations have risen, crested and washed up in her wake, success has given Beyoncé the freedom to make her career her own, the article continued. Now 34, she's evolved from a teen managed by her father in the girl group Destiny's Child to a woman who knows how to manipulate the system that created her.

In an era when many other female pop stars don't seem to have much say over their destiny, “Lemonade” speaks to Beyoncé's power. It's set off countless conversations about race, feminism, marital fidelity and beauty.

We were also fond of Adele and her "25." We wrote:

When Adele sings on her new album, "25," about an emotional experience so vivid that “It was just like a movie / It was just like a song,” she’s probably thinking of a tune by one of her idols: Roberta Flack, say, or Stevie Nicks.

But for fans of this 27-year-old British singer, such a moment could only be captured by one thing: an Adele song.

With her big hair and bigger voice, Adele broke out in 2008 as part of the British retro-soul craze that also included Duffy and Amy Winehouse.

Her debut album, “19,” spawned a hit single in “Chasing Pavements” and led to a Grammy Award for best new artist. Yet she outgrew any style or scene with the smash follow-up, “21,” which presented Adele as a great crystallizer of complicated feelings, an artist writing intimately about her own life (in this case about a devastating breakup) in a way that somehow made the music feel universal.

Clearly, the pressure is on to duplicate that commercial success with “25,” which comes after a long period of public quiet in which Adele recovered from throat surgery and gave birth to a son (and tweeted no more than a few dozen times). “Hello,” the record’s brooding lead single, set a record when it was released, racking up 1.1 million downloads in a week. But the song’s enthusiastic embrace only underscored the other, more pressing demand on the singer as she returns: that her music still provide its trademark catharsis.

Put another way, Adele’s fans have been waiting for years for new Adele songs to explain their experiences to them. And they get a worthy batch on “25,” an album so full of heavy-duty drama that it makes a more lighthearted peer such as Katy Perry seem like a Pez dispenser.