Grammy JT

ASK GRAMMY: We’d been wondering if Justin Timberlake’s two volumes of The 20/20 Experience could be nominated individually for Album of the Year Grammys. We’ve since learned that RCA is submitting the combined “Complete Experience” as a single release, but we still wanted to know which artists had competed against themselves in the Album category. So we asked NARAS VP Communications Barb Dehgan and her team. It turns out that the only artist to have two solo albums in contention for Album of the Year in the same year is someone who’s unquestionably influenced JT’s style: Frank Sinatra. Ol’ Blue Eyes received nods for Come Fly With Me and Only the Lonely at the first Grammys, announced in 1959. (Even so, the winner was Henry Mancini for The Music From Peter Gunn.) Grammy rules have since been changed so that an artist can’t have two noms in the Album category unless one of the two releases is with a co-nominee. Meanwhile, other acts who’ve been nominated in other categories for two solo albums in one year include Count Basie, Reba McEntire, “Pinetop” Perkins and Itzhak Perlman; the latter competed with himself and tied for two wins in the same category in 1980, becoming the only nominee who’s tied with himself as winner. (7/22p)