Get the rundown of 2016's Grammy nominees for album and song of the year
Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran, Mark Ronson, Taylor Swift and The Weeknd among the contenders at prestigious music awards ceremony
Socially conscious rapper Kendrick Lamar leads nominations going into the Grammy Awards, but he faces tough competition led by pop superstar Taylor Swift.
A diverse array of artists is in contention at the music industry’s premier awards ceremony, an action-packed evening that will feature performances by leading stars and tributes to deceased legends.
Nominees for album of the year, the most prestigious award, include Lamar’s experimental rap opus To Pimp a Butterfly and Swift’s pop blockbuster 1989. Other albums in contention are Sound and Color by acclaimed bluesy indie rockers Alabama Shakes, rising Canadian R&B star The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness and country songwriter Chris Stapleton’s Traveller.
Lamar has been nominated for 11 Grammys, the most for any artist in a single night except Michael Jackson for Thriller, the top-selling album of all time.
To Pimp a Butterfly breaks free from commercial formulas by running for nearly 80 minutes with a jazz backdrop and lengthy interludes of spoken word.
Much of the album is a rumination on the state of US race relations, with Alright – nominated for song of the year – an unofficial anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality.