Surprises dotted the visual media categories at Tuesday morning’s Grammy Awards nomination announcements, with television dominating the original-score category but new movies ruling the compilation-soundtrack list.
As expected, H.E.R. was nominated for best song written for visual media for “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which won the Oscar earlier this year. Her fellow Oscar nominee, Leslie Odom Jr.’s “Speak Now” from “One Night in Miami,” was also nominated.
H.E.R. and her fellow “Fight for You” songwriters Dernst Emile II (aka D’Mile) and Tiara Thomas also notched a song of the year nomination, and H.E.R. earned a nod in the traditional R&B performance category for that song.
Three of the six song nominees were from television projects: the Emmy-winning “Agatha All Along” from “WandaVision,” “All Eyes on Me” from “Inside Bo Burnham” and “All I Know So Far” from the Pink documentary by that title. The only new movie represented is “Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” from Jennifer Hudson’s Aretha Franklin film “Respect.”
On the other hand, four of the seven nominees in the compilation-soundtrack category are from recent or current films: “Cruella,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “In the Heights” and “Respect.” Last year’s “One Night in Miami” and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” were nominated, along with a single television project: “Schmigadoon! Episode 1.”
Television accounted for three of the five nominees in the score soundtrack category: Kris Bowers’ “Bridgerton,” Ludwig Göransson’s “The Mandalorian: Season 2” and Carlos Rafael Rivera’s “The Queen’s Gambit.” Göransson and Rivera won Emmys for the same music in September.
The 2020 Oscar winner “Soul” — by Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch — was also nominated, as expected, and may be considered the front-runner in that category. Batiste was also nominated in the jazz instrumental category for his separate album “Music From and Inspired by ‘Soul’” and in the improvised jazz solo category for a track from the soundtrack.
The only new movie nominated is Hans Zimmer’s score for “Dune.”
Film-related curiosities in other categories included Emile Mosseri’s nomination for best instrumental arrangement for a track from “Kajillionaire,” a surprise considering his other 2020 film, “Minari,” was nominated for an Oscar but ignored by the Grammy voters.
And “Women Warriors: The Voices of Change,” a symphonic album written entirely by women film composers, was nominated in the classical compendium category. Conductor Amy Andersson, and producers Lolita Ritmanis and Mark Mattson were cited as nominees. Composers included Nathalie Bonin, Miriam Cutler, Anne-Kathrin Dern, Isolde Fair, Sharon Farber, Penka Kouneva, Starr Parodi and Ritmanis.
