Who will be the top nominee for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards? We’ll find out on Friday (Nov. 10) when the Recording Academy announces its nominees in all 94 categories, including three that were added this year – best African music performance, best pop dance recording and best alternative jazz album.
Thirteen past Grammy winners, ranging from Amy Grant to Kim Petras, will help announce the nominees in a 25-minute livestream event that will begin at 11 a.m. ET. (There’s also a 15-minute pre-show and a wrap-up show for Grammy die-hards.) The announcement will be accessible on live.Grammy.com and YouTube.
Other Grammy winners onboard for the event include Arooj Aftab, Vince Gill, Jimmy Jam, Jon Bon Jovi, Samara Joy, Muni Long, Cheryl Pawelski, Judith Sherman, St. Vincent, Jeff Tweedy and “Weird Al” Yankovic. They will be joined by CBS Mornings co-hosts Gayle King, Nate Burleson and Tony Dokoupil and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
We don’t know for sure who’s going to be nominated, but we have a pretty good idea of some artists who are likely to be nominated in the so-called Big Four categories (album, record and song of the year plus best new artist), and what those nominations would mean in terms of Grammy history.
A few reminders first: It will be a little harder to crack the Big Four categories than it was the last two years, as The Recording Academy is cutting the number of nominees in each of those categories from a bloated 10 to eight, which was the magic number from 2020 to 2022. (Before that, it was generally five.)
This year’s eligibility period ran from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 15. (That closing date is two weeks earlier than usual.) Final-round voting extends from Dec. 14 to Jan. 4, 2024. The awards will be presented on Feb. 4, 2024, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
In a welcome change, the Academy reinstated a baseline of involvement needed to receive an album of the year nod. Credited and featured artists, songwriters, producers, engineers, mixers and mastering engineers must have worked on at least 20% of an album’s playing time to receive a nod. This is up from no baseline the last two years, when the Academy handed out nominations in this category like they were Halloween candy.
Here are 17 artists (and a soundtrack) who have a chance to make history when the nominations are announced. We also indicate how likely it is that this will happen.
