CAPITOL'S GRAMMY VOYAGE
The nomination-story headline for Michelle Jubelirer's Capitol is ABBA. The Swedish pop act—50 years after its formation—nabbed noms for Album of the Year (Voyage) and Record of the Year (“Don’t Shut Me Down”), not to mention Pop Vocal Album and Pop Duo/Group Performance.
Call it the Dancing Queen’s Golden Jubilee.
At the other end of the spectrum is Capitol Music Group’s contender for Best New Artist, the achingly young duo DOMi & JD Beck. Inked to Apeshit, Anderson .Paak’s JV label with Blue Note, French keyboardist Domi Louna and Yank drummer JD Beck offer a virtuosic fusion of jazz, rock and EDM that’s ready-made for Academy musos.
Meanwhile, the label’s biggest pop rocket in recent memory, the Sam Smith/Kim Petras duet “Unholy,” has also earned a Pop Duo/Group nomination. This was a surprise for many insiders only because the song is such a late-breaker relative to this year's Grammy-eligibility cutoff. But its seismic impact on the marketplace, as well as its gleeful (and timely) skewering of regressive sexual politics, made it impossible to resist.
