Los Angeles — On Sunday, the early winners for the Grammys were announced with Megan Thee Stallion, Beyonce and Billie Eilish among them. However, K-pop band BTS did not manage to win their first Grammy awards. The group lost in the best pop duo or group performance against Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande for their single Rain on Me. The septet was hoping to be the first K-pop act to win a Grammy after a breakthrough year in the United States for the genre.
According to a report by The Sun Daily as reported by Reuters, the Grammy awards were announced online ahead of the main Grammys telecast on CBS television, which is expected to be a hybrid ceremony of live and pre-recorded performances but, because of the coronavirus pandemic, without the usual arena audience of thousands of musicians and industry executives.
Megan Thee Stallion’s Savage featuring Beyonce scored a win in what could be a big night for the Texan musician who is seen as a leading contender for best new artist. Kanye West’s gospel album Jesus is King garnered a win as well, while Beyonce also won best music video for Brown Skin Girl, which she shared with her nine-year-old daughter Blue Ivy. 19-year-old Billie Eilish, the Los Angeles teen who dominated last year’s Grammys scored a win for her theme song to the upcoming James Bond film No Time to Die. She also has two other nods for her ballad Everything I Wanted.
The most nominated female artist in Grammy history with 79 career nods is none other than Beyonce who went into the ceremony with nine nominations, mostly from music that celebrated Black culture in a year of racial turmoil in the United States. For Sunday’s three-hour show Beyonce will not be performing and instead Taylor Swift, Megan Thee Stallion, Eilish, Harry Styles, Latin star Bad Bunny, and Black country singer Mickey Guyton are set to take the stage.
The unusually diverse line-up of contenders for the top prize, album of the year means it could be anyone’s night.
“The nominations were so surprising – The Weeknd not getting nominated – it’s a very strange year to try to predict,“ said Melinda Newman, Billboard’s executive editor for the West Coast and Nashville.
“I think it’s going to be a year where no-one makes a clean sweep,“ she added.
The 11,000 voting members of the Recording Academy selected the winners. The telecast will be hosted by talk show host Trevor Noah.
Swift and British pop singer Dua Lipa got six nominations apiece, along with rapper Roddy Ricch. Lipa, and her album Future Nostalgia, may have the edge as the only one of the trio to get nods in all three of the big races – album, record, and song of the year./TISG