SZA leads Grammy nominations as women dominate top categories
- Other strong contenders include Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Phoebe Bridgers, as well as tunes from the hit Barbie film
- The banner year for music’s women is a long time coming for critics of the Recording Academy, which has been said to overwhelmingly honour white, male acts
It will be a woman’s world at this season’s Grammys, with SZA scooping the most chances for gold on music’s biggest night with nine, as pop’s superstars including Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish dominated across the categories.
Olivia Rodrigo, Phoebe Bridgers and the rock supergroup boygenius are also strong contenders at the February 4 gala, where music from the blockbuster film Barbie will almost certainly clean up, according to the nominations list released Friday.
SZA – the acerbic, R&B risk-taker whose layered tales of romance earned her acclaim with her debut Ctrl in 2017 and saw her top the charts again with 2022’s SOS – is poised to reign over the gala, with nominations spanning the categories.
And Bridgers, one-third of the supergroup boygenius with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, earned seven nominations while the collective group earned six, both in the top fields as well as in the rock categories.
The already decorated Eilish has six chances for a Grammy thanks to her work on Greta Gerwig’s summer smash Barbie film, whose soundtrack that also features Dua Lipa earned nominations in the major categories and the visual media fields.