The 58th Annual Grammy nominees are here, and with the list comes a renewed interest in a simple question: what qualifies an artist as "new"?
Here's the list of nominees for Best New Artist: Courtney Barnett, James Bay, Sam Hunt, Tori Kelly, and Meghan Trainor.
Eyebrows were raised at the inclusion of Meghan Trainor.
The pop singer's single "All About That Bass" was nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year at last year's awards.
So how could she possibly be a "new" artist?
It goes back to the 2010 awards, when Lady Gaga was excluded from the Best New Artist category. Though she had been a chart-topping artist in 2009, technically she was already nominated for a single back in 2008 ("Just Dance"), and was therefore ineligible.
So the Recording Academy changed the rules. Now, a musician could be nominated for Best New Artist as long as they haven't won a Grammy — prior nominations were fine.
In a 2014 blog post, the organization attempted to clear up any confusion.
A "new artist" is defined for the GRAMMY process as any performing artist or established performing group who releases, during the eligibility year, the recording that first establishes the public identity of that artist or established group as a performer. A GRAMMY nomination in a performance category in a prior year disqualifies an artist from competing in this category, unless the nomination came from a single or a guest spot on another artist's recording, and the artist hadn't yet released a full album.
So — the qualifiers are any artist/group who becomes mainstream in the eligible year, and if they've already been nominated, it doesn't matter as long as they were only nominated for a single or feature on someone's else's record.
It seems impossible to get music listeners everywhere to memorize this convoluted rule though. Fans were mystified when Ed Sheeran was nominated for Best New Artist in 2014, as he had already had a single nominated the previous year.
—HozierFan (@HozierFan) December 5, 2014
And indie-music lovers were amused when Bon Iver, a group who's first album was released in 2007, won Best New Artist five years later in 2012.
—Tiffany Smith (@imthuginsgirl) February 13, 2012
The confusion never ends.
