The Recording Academy announced nominees for the 2021 Grammy Awards on Tuesday, and LGBTQ+ artists from Lido Pimienta to Lady Gaga may be on track to sweep next year’s ceremony.
Though last year’s Grammys were also a big win for queer musicians — from eye-popping performances by Lil Nas X to a Best Rap Album win by Tyler, The Creator — this year’s nominations delivered nods for a slew of queer entertainers across multiple categories, showing that diverse LGBTQ+ talent is taking over the music industry.
In the Best Rock Performance category, women dominated, and queer women in particular — like Brittany Howard, Phoebe Bridgers, Grace Potter, and Adrianne Lenker of the band Big Thief — composed a majority of the nominees. Nominees in Best Latin Rock Album and Best Dance/Electronic Album categories included Lido Pimienta, Arca, and Kaytranda — the latter of whom was also nominated for Best New Artist, even though the Haitian-Canadian DJ has been producing and releasing music for years. He was accompanied by Chika and Megan Thee Stallion in that category, two Black Queer women who have respectively had a major impact on pop culture through their releases and advocacy throughout the year. In the Pop categories, Lady Gaga secured two nominations for Chromatica, her sixth studio album, while Katie Pruitt was nominated for Production, Non-Classical.
The Grammy Awards have been criticized in the past for spotty recognition of talent from marginalized communities, especially from the worlds of hip-hop and R&B. This July, the Recording Academy announced that it had offered membership to over 2,300 music industry professionals from a diverse array of backgrounds as part of an effort to shake its “toxic boys club culture,” as former CEO Deborah Dugan described it to the Los Angeles Times in January. This year’s expansive inclusion of queer nominations may reflect the Recording Academy’s more expansive membership — and while it remains to be seen how the changes will shake out at next year’s awards, it’s a promising start.
Check out the full list of 2021 Grammys nominees here. The 63rd annual Grammy Awards will be televised on January 31 on CBS.
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