The Recording Academy announced on Wednesday that it will expand the eligibility for the best New Artist Grammy category, after pop star Lady Gaga was prevented from nomination this year.
In what most industry observers deemed as among “the most egregious snubs in recent years,” the visually stunning, genre-bending, envelope-pushing Lady Gaga had been excluded in nominations for Best New Artist in last year’s Grammys because of eligibility issues. But Reuters reports that the Grammys are now “doing their best to fix” the situation.
Apparently, changing up the eligibility rules for its coveted Best New Artist category would somehow ensure that artists like Lady Gaga and others before or after her would not fall through the cracks and into the bin of “snubbed” acts again.
Lady Gaga already received a Grammy nomination in the dance category in 2008 for the single “Just Dance.” While it was a hit (and though she lost to Daft Punk in that category), her first album, “The Fame,” did not hit the U.S. album chart until much later that year; by that time the eligibility period had already ended.
So while Lady Gaga was clearly the biggest new artist to have dominated the pop scene last year, she was ineligible for the Best New Artist nomination for having been nominated in a different category the year before. Lady Gaga may have received five Grammy nominations last year, but she wasn’t declared the best new artist to have broken ground on the year that she did, even when she clearly deserved the title.
Because artists like Lady Gaga—whose music and vision have pushed the boundaries of pop music and performance—are too groundbreaking to just be excluded like that, the people behind the Recording Academy are remedying the situation. They now have reportedly decided that a previous nomination without a victory would not be a hindrance anymore to a Best New Artist nomination.
The industry welcomes this especially in the light of an increasing trend that sees artists release a debut single long before their debut album actually comes out. This also works well for artists that debut as featured performers on someone else’s recording.
But make no mistake; the academy isn’t reviewing the ruling based on Lady Gaga alone. Truth is, the term “new” in the best new artist category has elicited confusion and contention among industry observers. In the Reuters report, an artist like Shelby Lynne was given as an example—apparently she had won in the category in 2001 after finally getting mainstream attention for what was already her sixth album. This hardly makes her a new artist then.
The rules were later reportedly changed so that artists who had already recorded more than three albums would be ineligible for inclusion in the category.
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