On the Friday evening of November 10th, 2023, individuals around the United States were seated for the annual 66th GRAMMYs award nomination ceremony. Over 300,000 citizens huddled around any device close enough to watch the ceremony. Would their favorite nominees earn a nomination? Or would they just be another victim of the Recording Academy’s notorious snubs?

Luckily, girl power won this year after R&B singer SZA became the most nominated artist this year with a total of nine nominations, girlband Boygenius earned a total of seven nominations at their first ever year attending the award show, Taylor Swift now has a 52x nominee, and Janelle Monae’s ‘The Age of Pleasure’ was the first album to earn the singer a nomination in five years. 

While many do agree that artists like SZA do deserve their nominations, especially after she sold 318,000 copies and broke a seven-year record with her newest album SOS dominating the US billboard charts for nine consecutive weeks, there’s also controversy stirring around many snubbed artists who may have deserved to be nominated for a specific category. 

PinkPantheress is a perfect example of a popular snub this year. Instead of being able to celebrate with champagne and calling friends and family, she had to become another casualty of scamming. Her music has continued to have an intense grip on the media with her most popular single, ‘Boy’s a Liar.’ It was almost impossible to escape her songs this year, yet not a single nomination was earned for her or her songs. It is obvious that The Recording Academy prefers to stay out of touch with music that the leading majority enjoys listening to. 

There was another snub this year that ticked off many rock and roll enthusiasts, this year’s Best Rock Song nominees. Many were shocked to see Olivia Rodrigo’s only rock song ‘ballad of a homeschooled girl’ earn a nomination, and fear that she may win over artists who have been rockstars since the singer was in the womb, such as the Foo Fighters and The Rolling Stones. Erupting with anger, people took to social media websites, such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, stating that the Grammys should have used the space for actual rock artists and that Rodrigo does not belong in the same category as their favorite bands. 

Throughout the years, the Grammys have fancied the idea of snubbing artists worthy enough to earn their gold coated trophies. But the award show remains persistent on leaving those artists in the dust causing the award shows viewership to go down consistently over the years. Artists do not need a Grammy, the Grammys need them for their popularity.