Grammys: Beyonce nominated for Album of the Year

With nominations in each of the top four categories for the 2015 Grammy Awards, British singer Sam Smith could be poised for the biggest win by a UK performer since Adele's 2012 triumph.

The 22-year-old London native - whose soul-based style has prompted comparisons to Adele and another English star, the late Amy Winehouse - grabbed an album of the year nod, bringing his field-leading total to six.

Beyonce - who won a record-setting six Grammys at the 2010 ceremony - tied with Smith on the day, scoring her sixth nom in the album of the year slot for her self-titled set.

The other nominees in the top category were Beck's ‘Morning Phase’, Ed Sheeran's ‘X’ and Pharrell Williams' ‘Girl’. (Sheeran and Williams began the daylong rollout of Grammy nominations by revealing four categories on "CBS This Morning" early Friday.)

Smith was the only performer to rate nominations dispensed by voting Recording Academy members in the four general-field categories - album, record and song of the year and best new artist. Rodney Jerkins' ‘Darkchild version’ of Smith's hit ‘Stay With Me’ was acknowledged in the record and song slot. He was also tabbed in the best pop solo performance and best pop vocal album categories.

Smith will compete for the best new artist crown with rapper Iggy Azalea, British rock quartet Bastille, Nashville singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, and L.A. sibling pop trio Haim.

Should Smith grab awards in the four general categories, he'll perform an unprecedented feat, since no performer has captured all those honors in a single year. Both Adele and Winehouse were nominated in all four slots. Adele holds honors in all four top categories: She collected album, record, and song of the year in 2012 with her multi-platinum ‘21’ and its hit ‘Rolling in the Deep’, and was named best new artist in 2009. In 2008, Winehouse won record and song of the year, for ‘Rehab’, and best new artist, but lost out in the album category to Herbie Hancock's ‘River: The Joni Letters’.

African-American performers received scant accolades in the major categories. Besides Smith and Swift, the big players there included Australian-born debutante Azalea, her veteran countrywoman Sia and 20-year-old Massachusetts-born singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor, whose homage to outsized booties ‘All About That Bass’ was the fall's major novelty hit.

Much beloved by the academy, and with a huge commercial hit to her credit, Beyonce stood virtually alone among her peers (save Williams' album nod, in recognition of his omnipresent "Happy" hit.) Her album created a sensation when it was released entirely without advance fanfare in December 2013, as an exclusive audio-visual release via the iTunes store. Though the set went on to sell more than 2.1 million copies, the crossover superstar's other nods came mainly in R&B categories (and mostly in tandem with her husband Jay Z, for their ‘Drunk in Love’).

Ubiquitous hit-maker Taylor Swift was not in the album of the year running, for her smash ‘1989’ was issued after the Sept. 30 nomination cut-off date. However, the country-turned-pop megastar still garnered noms in three slots, including record and song of the year, for the collection's leadoff single ‘Shake It Off’. (The tune's co-writer and co-producer, pop mastermind Max Martin, was cited in the non-classical producer of the year category.)

The Recording Academy chose to single out its album of the year award at the precise moment when the album format itself is being viewed as a vastly diminished commercial entity. Just this week, Nielsen Music inaugurated its new album chart, which features a new formula that attempts to give parity to physical album scans, downloaded tracks and streamed songs in the sales mix.

Nominations in many of the Grammys' genre fields this year sometimes reflected a hidebound conservatism.

Rock voters doled out kudos this year to such familiar names as Beck, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and U2 (whose lone nod, for best rock album, came for their album ‘Songs of Innocence’, first released exclusively, and controversially, via iTunes). More contemporary nominees - Jack White, the Black Keys - were Recording Academy favorites of long standing.

Though ‘bro-country’ artists like Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line are the biggest draws in the country genre, you'd never know it by looking at NARAS' 2015 nominees. Party-hearty, rap-influenced sounds gave way to the work of such acts as Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban and Lee Ann Womack, who look positively traditional by comparison. Rock-oriented Eric Church, whose ‘The Outsiders’ reached No. 1 nationally this year, was the edgiest nominee, and drew recognition in four categories.

The Recording Academy, which has placed an increasing emphasis on consumer involvement via social media in recent years, turned the nominations process into a day-long web-based treasure hunt this year, with opening and closing salvos fired on partner network CBS.

Following Sheeran and Williams' ‘CBS This Morning’ appearance, the academy then began to trickle out other nominees in 25 more slots via a series of celebrity videos posted on Twitter. A full list of nominations in 82 of the 83 categories was finally unveiled at 11 am PT. The album of the year nods came at the end of CBS' "A Very Grammy Christmas" primetime special.
 

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