Beyoncé Becomes Grammys’ Most-Nominated Woman, First Artist To Be Nominated In Four Genres In One Year
The 2017 Grammys nominations were announced today and, of course, Beyoncé picked up a ton of nominations for Lemonade, Stereogum’s personal pick for Album Of The Year. She was nominated for the big three — Album, Record, and Song Of The Year — plus a handful of others, including Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, Best Rock Performance, and Best Urban Contemporary Album. If you’re keeping count, that’s one song in four genres, and it turns out that’s the first time it’s ever happened, accordng to the Recording Academy’s VP of Awards Bill Freimuth, who said as much in an interview with Complex. He also shed some light on how “Don’t Hurt Yourself” ended up in the Rock category:
Well firstly it was entered there by Beyoncé’s label. But then that went to the sorting committees. We have 24 different committees that based on genre, with people who are experts in that genre. They listen through everything and discuss it and decide whether where it was originally entered is the best place for it. Lots of moves are made by those committees and sometimes where an artist thinks they should be, or where a label thinks they should be, doesn’t necessarily match up with our definitions of a particular genre. But in this case it did. The committee listened to it and said, “Yeah, that’s rock.”
With all of her nominations this year, Beyoncé has racked up a total of 62 nominations, which also makes her the most-nominated female artist in the history of the awards.