Grammy Gossip: New Categories and Surprising Snubs
Each year, the well-established music awards, the Grammy’s, are announced and strong controversial opinions always form quite quickly, heres the facts, opinions and fake news you need to know.
Taking the lead with an outstanding 9 nominations, the one and only Kendrick Lamar has come out on top! Lady Gaga, Jack Antonoff and Cirkut closely follow behind with an impressive 7 nominations apiece. However, expecting fans have expressed confusion and outrage on the lack of nominations from other artists.
Commencing on the 1st of February 2026, global pop star Taylor Swift completely failed in receiving a single nomination. Her album ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, just wasn’t nominated. Whilst this caused an eruption of controversy amongst the singers fanbase ‘swifities’, it was later realized that this wasn’t a snub, but in fact due to ineligibility and therefore all the drama was over nothing! Dropping the album in October 2025 meant she evaded the Grammy eligibility cut-off date for 2026, which ended August 30th, 2025. Her detachment from the awards, was simply a mistake.
Currently on tour, Lorde’s new album ‘Virgin’ was totally shut out. Previously being stated as one of the year’s strongest albums by several news outlets, fans were surprised and left asking themselves, “Why didn’t the academy recognize her talent?”. Raising blatant questioning of the selection process, the most listened to artist on Spotify, The Weeknd, with 123 million monthly listeners, faced zero nominations, even after submitting work for consideration. As his figures are high, does this really mean he automatically deserves a nomination? Another artist pointed to as being ‘snubbed’ was Role Model. Despite his commercial presence, he too appeared to have zero nominations thereby sparking even more gossip and raising multiple enigmas.
Famously known for gaining popularity on TikTok for being a part of the ‘Hype House’ during quarantine, Addison Rae and ex-housemate Alex Warren, both have been recognized for the ‘Best New Artist’ category. Some claiming, this was deserved after their viral songs and changed aesthetics although arguably, others have stated their fame and recognition, which came from social media, and other artists lack thereof is unfair and undeserved. Is it unjust, or is it that they merely climbed up the fame ladder?
Additional categories have appeared too! ‘Best Album Cover’ and ‘Best Traditional Country Album’ allow for an exciting sense of creativity and also new nominees to get their foot in the door. Though, with new categories, always comes a debate on who benefits. Do these changes actually increase fairness, or are they just for the optics?
It does seem impossible to keep everyone happy whenever there’s an awards ceremony. With that being said, if your favourite artist was so called ‘snubbed’, know that you’re not alone and you can only hope the next awards bring about less controversy.
Written by Haydn Davis
