It’s that time of the year again. The Recording Academy is looking to determine the top artists, songs, and albums of this year in order to bestow the highest of music awards—the Grammy Award.
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This year, The Recording Academy gave the voting process a huge overhaul to include 12,000 voting members, as opposed to previously smaller councils. Additionally, voting members will only vote in 10 categories, rather than 15, and those 10 categories must be within three fields. The goal of this change is to encourage voters to stay within their area of expertise. Members will still get to vote in the “big four”: album, record, song of the year, and best new artist.
Despite speculation that the changes came following The Weeknd’s proposed boycott of the GRAMMY Awards, interim president and CEO of The Recording Academy, Harvey Mason Jr., said otherwise in an interview with Variety.
“The discussions about possibly removing nominations review started long ago and the real work of putting together a subcommittee to get this right started about eight or nine months ago, so, this isn’t a direct ‘reaction’ to that situation,” said Mason in the interview. “That said, any time an artist, especially one of that stature, calls our process into question or thinks something is unfair… the Academy is, of course, going to be affected by that, and want to work to make things better.”
The first round of voting began on October 22 and ends Friday, November 5. Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, November 23 for the final round of voting to open Monday, December 6. The 64th Grammy Awards will air Monday, January 31, 2022, on CBS and will be streamed live on Paramount+.
Additionally, American Songwriter will be casting a vote in this year’s awards. The magazine joins the ranks of qualified voting members determining who will receive the coveted Grammy Award.
