5 Legendary Artists Who Were Never Nominated for a Grammy

Despite being one of the best-selling female groups in pop history, the Spice Girls never picked up a Grammy nomination. As one of the most successful boy bands of all time, selling more than 70 million records worldwide, One Direction somehow missed the mark when it came to getting a nomination while they were together, though individual members received Grammy nods and awards as solo artists.

Within country music, many artists picked up Grammy nominations but never won, including Bill Anderson, Jamey Johnson, Martina McBride, Blake Shelton, Rascal Flatts, Eric Church, and Kenny Chesney, among others. Though some received Lifetime Achievement Awards, rock bands including the Grateful Dead, Rush, Queen, KISS, Heart, Rush, Journey, ZZ Top, and Guns N’ Roses, also had Grammy nods but never won.

The Doors were nominated for Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording for An American Prayer in 1980, nearly a decade after Jim Morrison’s death, and were given a Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy in 2007, yet never won during their heyday, while Deep Purple, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Def Leppard are a few more rockers who were never nominated.

Many more legendary acts were surprisingly never nominated despite their successes. Here’s a look at just five more acts who never received a Grammy nomination.

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Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline won a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, more than three decades after her death, but she never received a Grammy, or nomination, during her brief career. Though Cline died in 1963 in a plane crash, four years after the Grammys officially started, her earlier hits like “I Fall to Pieces” and “Crazy” in 1961—along with “When I Get Thru With You (You’ll Love Me Too)” and “She’s Got You” from ’62, among others—were worthy of a few nods within her lifetime.

The Who

Decades into their career, The Who‘s Tommy was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998, followed by “My Generation” in 1999, and Who’s Next in 2007, but the band has never been nominated for a Grammy for their music. They did receive two Grammy nominations for videos, including Best Music Video – Long Form for The Who Live – Featuring The Rock Opera Tommy in 1991 and another in 2019 for Best Long Form Music Video for Amazing Journey: The Story Of The Who.

Bob Marley and the Wailers

In 2001, 20 years after his death, Bob Marley received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, but he and the Wailers were never nominated during his lifetime, even for classics “Get Up, Stand Up,” “No Woman, No Cry” and “One Love,” or the group’s 1977 album Exodus. Though never nominated, Marley and the Wailers’ albums Exodus and Catch a Fire, along with the aforementioned “Get Up, Stand Up,” “No Woman, No Cry,” and “One Love” are in the Grammy Hall of Fame

The Kinks

The Kinks were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, two years after the Beatles and a year after the Rolling Stones. Even though the Kinks were one of the biggest bands during the British Invasion and had five top 20 albums and seven top 20 singles between the 1960s and ’80s, they never received a Grammy nomination. The band’s string of hits like “You Really Got Me,” “Lola,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “Come Dancing,” and “Waterloo Sunset,” didn’t get one nod.

The Ramones

In his 2022 book, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, Bono remembers his 18th birthday in 1978, the day the Ramones opened his world to music and songwriting. “I’m jumping around the living room of 10 Cedarwood Road to the sound of ‘Glad to See You Go’ from the Ramones’ ‘Leave Home,’ Bono wrote. “These songs are so simple, and yet they express a complexity that’s way more relevant to my life than Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment.’ … Songs so simple, I may be able to write one.”

Along with U2, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Green Day were a handful of bands inspired by the punk pioneers. Within their 30-plus-year span together, before disbanding in 1996, the Ramones released 14 albums and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011— and many years after founding members Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny Ramone died—but were never honored while they were together.

Photo: Patsy Cline (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)