10 biggest Grammy surprises: We goofed by not predicting Victoria Monet, Janelle Monae, Jelly Roll …
The Grammy nominations were announced on Friday morning, November 10, and Gold Derby’s predictions in the big four general field categories were 68.75% accurate, which means we correctly forecast 22 out of 32 nominees across Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist. But that also means we were wrong 10 times. Scroll down to see who made the cut in spite of their odds. And check out the list of nominations here.
R&B singer-songwriter Victoria Monet scored twice despite our predictions all but counting her out with 100/1 odds. She’s among the eight contenders for Best New Artist even though we’d ranked her 14th in the race. Just 70 Gold Derby users anticipated her bid there. Even more surprising was her nom for Record of the Year for “On My Mama”; only one user out of more than 2,000 who made predictions saw that one coming. Overall, Monet received seven Grammy noms, more than any other Best New Artist nominee, so you might want to pencil her in as your predicted winner now too.
Also taking us by surprise was Janelle Monae. She was nominated for Album of the Year for “The Age of Pleasure,” her second bid in the category for one of her own albums following “Dirty Computer” in 2019. Before that she earned an Album of the Year nom in 2013 as a featured artist on Fun‘s breakthrough “Some Nights.” Winning might be tougher for Monae, though. She’s only nominated twice overall, and in both of her races she’s up against SZA, the nominations leader with nine total bids.
See who else snagged surprise noms from the recording academy below. Did you correctly predict any of these unexpected outcomes?
LONG SHOTS
These contenders were nominated despite getting 100/1 odds.
Album of the Year
Janelle Monae, “The Age of Pleasure”
Record of the Year
Boygenius, “Not Strong Enough”
Victoria Monet, “On My Mama”
Best New Artist
Victoria Monet
Jelly Roll
Fred Again
CLOSE CALLS
We knew these contenders had a shot, but weren’t predicting them to get in.
Album of the Year
Miley Cyrus, “Endless Summer Vacation”
Record of the Year
Jon Batiste, “Worship”
Song of the Year
Jon Batiste, “Butterfly”
Best New Artist
The War and Treaty