The voting doesn't begin till next month, the nominations won't be announced until "later this year" and the cermony itself will take place on January 31st. However, August 31st is the official deadline for nominees, so I think the time has come to start properly speculating.

New things of note:

The grammys voting process, where even though the entire academy techincally votes, is decided by a sub-panel made of "elite" members. This has already been suspect over the years, but recently has become even more so as it's been revealed that the super-board has basically just been nominating their friends the entire time (or people the producers wanted to perform on the broadcast). A specific example was given of a 2018 song of the year nominee (unnamed, but we can guess) actually being on the sub-committee itself and pushing to nominate themselves over artists that got a lot more votes. And while it was believed that the super-delegates had to pick from the original voters top 20 at the very least, it has also been revealed that they could just plug in whatever they wanted.

All that is very bad, but still, album of the year is still the most prestigious prize in music so we have to make the best of it. And if they're being investigated then maybe this year will be better and actually nominate who the voters want?

New artist has also changed, where it is more about who had a "breakout year" than who actually released their first albums. Meh, but whatever.

Recap: Billie Eilish won everything last year. The year before it was Kacy Musgraves taking album and Donald Glover taking both song categories.

For 2021, or music released between Sept 1 2019 and August 30 2020, the contenders are:

The Weeknd - Has to be the favorite in all categories. We know the voters already love him and this has become his signature piece of music. I could see an upset in album of the year, but Blinding Lights losing Record would be one of the biggest shocks in their history.

Dua Lipa - If anyone is going to upset the weekend, it will probably be Dua. She won New Artist a few years ago and Future Nostalgia just seems made for a big awards run. Only question is if she will be represented by Don't Start Now or Physical in the song categories.

Taylor Swift - Just as likely to win as not be nominated at all. 1989 beating Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly obviously caused a lot of PR problems for this show and they've bitterly snubbed just about everything she has released since. Still ... I feel like the older members would want to reward an extremely popular artist for shifting over to a style that fits their taste. At the very least, Cardigan should be in for both record and song.

Roddy Richh - Beat Lizzo for album of the year at the BET awards. The Box is the most popular song of the year. New Artists feels like a given, but I think he also scores album and record too.

Post Malone - The grammys love their white rappers.

Fiona Apple - 98 on metacritic and she has never won before.

HAIM - This is a semi-longshot, a medium shot if you will. Alternative got a few noms last year, and Fiona will probably get in this year, but this girl group really stepped up their game this year and delivered one of the highest scored releases. Plus they have more exposure than similar artists due to being BFFs with Taylor for that one summer.

The Chicks - Have won album of the year before, but then were cancelled for criticizing the war in Iraq before storming back with some progressive bops. We usually get at least one country representative and this will be it.

Those are my predictions for the 8. There are many other contenders though, I wouldn't be surprised by a ton of Bad Bunny nominations to show how extra woke they are. And people seem to really love Harry Styles for reasons I don't understand. Run the Jewels would fit in perfectly, but they've been completely ignored by the grammys up to this point. Killers and Carly deserve it but will never make it in.

Record of the Year:

Blinding Lights - The Weeknd
Don't Star Now - Dua Lipa
Circles - Post Malone
Cardigan - Taylor Swift
Something - BTS
The Box - Roddy Richh
Gaslighter - The Chicks
Rain on Me - Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande

Pretty much what you would expect. People that will perform on the show and hopefully get the kids to watch.

Yeah, your french vanilla fantasy of cardigan up there in the main awards is lulz

I am rooting for Circles, its the best song of the lot and had a record breaking year in Billboard Top 10.

If Taylor is nominated she will win. If they don't nominate it will be the biggest travesty in their history and they should close up shop.

Not in a year where Blinding Lights exists.

Blinding Lights is the obvious SOTY/ROTY winner and whatever he decides on the genre r&B or pop, he's gonna sweep.

Thats' not a prediction, that's a spoiler.

Nominations announced on November 24th.

You ready for the taylor snubs?

50/50. They could probably nominate her without worrying about her winning at this point since The Weeknd is such a strong frontrunner. But they probably thought that in 2016 too and are still feeling the burn from Taylor upsetting Kendrick Lamar.

I wish the grammys had normal voting so we didn’t have to project fears of the secret board, but it is what it is.

Gold Derby has Weekdn at 7.5-1 and Dua, Taylor, Fiona tied at 11-1.

My longshot hopes of Killers and Run the Jewels getting in don’t look good.

What the hell!? NO nominations for The Weeknd? Absolute blasphemy.

Yummy got nominated? What in the flying fuck


Folklore for aoty tbh.

Wtf at these nominations. can’t believe they snubbed The Weeknd on everything.

They are so crazy you can’t even be mad at them. I honestly have no idea who Jacob Collier is.

Seems to be set up for a Dua Lipa sweep now but maybe the Black Pumas revolution will overtake that??

How the hell did The Weeknd not get a single nomination?! Not winning would have been an upset, but not even getting a nomination? Wow.

This aged well.

Also, Beyonce released 1.5 songs and got the most nominations.

Black Pumas was the same album they released last year for the New Artist nomination, but a deluxe version with some extra songs... Doesn’t seem very fair.

After all the promises they made about altering their process it really does just seem like the secret board just overrode everything again to put their friends on and generate controversy. Maybe Taylor and Black Parade will win for that very reason.

So the story going around is that The Weeknd sent his album in for the pop categories to make a point about how the difference between pop/r&b is almost always based on skin color.

Must have really pissed off the secret board and in revenge they might crown Taylor as the best singer of all time. Only other people who have won 3 are Sinatra and Stevie Wonder, but one of Frank’s is for a greatest hits album.

Yummy getting nominations invalidates Grammys entirely, The movie equivalent would be Cats getting nominated for BP Oscar.

And... Cats got a Grammy nom too lol

Blinding Lights not being nominated for song/record of the year is an absolute joke.

They don't deserve their own threads this year, so I'll just put a poll on this thread.

Predictions:

Album of the year - Folklore.

-The more I think about it, the more this seems obvious. It's just a bummer that Taylor will now forever be associated with racism. I like Future Nostalgia the most, but I'll be rooting for HAIM since it would mean the most to them and still make Taylor happy.

Record/Song of the year - Black Parade

-They'll try to offset the racial backlash with this pick. Spoiler: its not gonna work.

New Artist - Megan Thee Stallion

-Rooting for Chika though!

The big winner of today is Other Awards Show. For perhaps the first time since the VMAs lost relevance in the early 00s, there is a chance for someone to supplant the grammys and their dumb Super Secret Nomination Panel. I dunno who will step up or how they will do it, but plans should be in motion.

I'm not sure if there's another music award that can be pushed nut now is the time. Some really horrible choices.

I haven't listened to the new Coldplay, was it deserving or... lol

It’s fine. I’m a Coldplay fan and thought it was their worst, but not by a significant amount of anything. They went back to a softer sound after going for the big pop hits on the last two albums. But ... it just seemed so inconsequential I can’t believe people even remembered. Note that it got zero noms in rock or alternative categories. It was definitely Fiona Apple’s spot and they just went with Coldplay for whatever reason.

If Spotify could somehow gather a large amount of people in the bizz + critics + putting their own streaming numbers into the equation... Well shit I don’t know if it would work, but this Nominations Committee has gone too far and something must be done about it . I’d trust Rudy Guliani to count the ballots over them at this point.