GREIN GRAMMY UPDATE: ALBUMS AND THE ENTRY LIST
Don Henley's Cass County entered the country album chart at #1, but it won't receive a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album.
The album is entered instead for Best Americana Album, a category won in the past six years by Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell & Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm (twice) and Mavis Staples. The Weeknd's Beauty Behind the Madness is entered for Best Urban Contemporary Album (rather than for Best R&B Album).
Both albums are of course also entered for Album of the Year. Our Grammy whisperer, Paul Grein, thinks they'll both be nominated in that top category, along with Taylor Swift's 1989, Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly and Sam Hunt's Montevallo. Those three albums showed up in the expected places on the Grammy entry list, which was released today.
Swift's album is entered for Best Pop Vocal Album. If it wins that award (and it goes without saying it will), Swift will become the first artist to take Best Album honors in both pop and country. (Her sophomore album, Fearless, won Best Country Album along with Album of the Year.) Lamar's album is entered for Best Rap Album. Lamar was nominated in that category with his last album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, but controversially lost to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' The Heist. Hunt's album is entered for Best Country Album.
