The nominees for the 60th Grammy Awards were unveiled this morning, and people have been quick to note that for the first time in almost 20 years no white men have been nominated for Album of The Year.
The 2018 Grammy nominees habe been unveiled, and for the first time in almost 20 years no white men are up for Album of the Year.
DJ/producer and writer Dani Deahl was among the first to pick up on the milestone on Twitter, where she listed the nominees – Childish Gambino, Jay Z, Kendrick Lamar, Lorde and Bruno Mars – pointing out that all the artists were women and people of colour.
Maeve McDermott, journalist for USA Today, also took note.
This is the first year since 1999 that a white man hasn’t been nominated for album of the year.
My story about #Grammys diversity and this year’s much-needed course correction: https://t.co/9P5udrTTty
— Maeve McDermott (@maeve_mcdermott) November 28, 2017
This trend was prevalent across the field. As triple j note, Jay Z leads the 2018 nominations pool with a total of eight, followed by Kendrick Lamar at seven, then Childish Gambino and Bruno Mars tied at six apiece.
Last year, The Grammys faced criticism from fans and artists for a perceived lack of racial diversity when Adele’s 25 took out Album of The Year over Beyonce’s Lemonade and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly.
However, speaking with The Fader this week, Bill Freimuth, the senior vice president of awards for The Recording Academy, said that this year’s apparent diversification was not a reaction to past controversies, noting that The Grammys don’t keep track of stats on race or age.
“I think the pool of nominees came out this way because our voters said that this is the best music this year. We really try to discourage taking into account the race of the artist or even the genre in the general field.
“In terms of the awards process, we want it to be fair, transparent, and unbiased in every way,” he explained further. “We don’t keep statistics about the ethnicities or ages of our nominees.”
On the other hand, Pitchfork have pointed out a noticeable lack of female nominees in the major categories with only a fifth of the nominations across the Big Four this year going to female artists: Lorde, Julia Michaels, SZA, and Alessia Cara.
Check out the full list of nominees here. The 60th Annual Grammy Awards will take place on January 28th 2018 in NYC.
