Women rock the 2024 Grammy nominations

Women dominated the major categories and came through in raps and country. But metal and producers – the Grammy’s are still behind.

I guess the Grammy membership got the message: women buy more music than men. Women stream more music than men. And, if they missed that…well, there is Taylor Swift. The result is that women dominated the top  categories and did ok in categories that often contain only men. A women led the pack for most noms – SZA with nine. And four of five nominees for Mexican music were women.

In the Album of the Year category were Lana del Rey, the female supergroup Boygenius,  Olivia Rodrigo, SZA, Janelle Monáe, Miley Cyrus, and Taylor Swift.  The only male nominee was Jon Batiste.

There has never been a year when 7 of the eight nominations for Best Album were all by women, much less two Latina-Americans

Over in Record of the Year we find Boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Billie Elish, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, SZA, and Victoria Monet. Seven out of eight nominees are women, and again Jon Baptiste is the only male nominee.

 Of the eight nominees for Best New Artist, 5 are women and one is a married couple, a pretty strong showing. Song of the Year included 8 women out of 21 songwriters, which is not too bad  because this is a collaborative category and  seven of the eight songs were performed by women.

As usual, there are no women in the Producer of the Year (non-classical)  category despite the growing number of women now producing. But all of the Best Solo Performance nominees are female, and  women dominated the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Pop Vocal Album categories (Ed Sheeran was the only male ).

Of course,  Best Metal Performance was all men (where was Militia Vox, who is better than any of the men nominated), but Boygenius managed to slip into Best Rock Performance, and Best Alternative Music Performance, along with Lana del Rey. And the other group nominated in this category, Paramore, is fronted by the very female Halley Williams.

But the real test is the country and rap categories, historically dominated by guys. Women did well  in rap. Best Rap Song nominees included  Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, Eryn Allen Kane, although men dominated the category.

 This year there were two women in the Best Country Solo Performance category, Brandy Clark and Dolly Parton. There were three in Best Country Duo Performance, Casey Musgrave and, Carly Pearce.  Laney Wilson and Kelsea Ballerini both got nominated in the Best Country Album category – two women out of six nominations – not enough, but not invisible.

In the Latin category, I was happy to see my Columbian friends Diamante Electrico nominated , but I was especially happy to see Mexican Natalia Lafourcade get a nod. I hope she wins. But I was even happier to that four of the five albums nominated in the Best Mexicana Album category were female -when has that happened before?  

So women did well in the 2024 Grammy nominations, and well they should. Now we will have to see how many of them walk off the stage with gold.

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