News

The Beatles and The Stones amongst Grammy nominees

Who else has got the nod?

By Paul Sinclair

Comments

36

Don’t Give Up – Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush also in with a chance

The 2025 Grammy nominations have just been announced and some classic artists have received recognition in various categories.

The Beatles get their first nomination in 28 years for the ‘Now and Then’ single. The song earned nods for Record Of The Year and Best Rock Performance, which brings their career nominations count to 25. Perhaps surprisingly, The Beatles have only ever won seven Grammys.

The Fab Four’s former rivals The Rolling Stones (they’ve only won three times) are nominated in the Best Rock Album category for their well received Hackney Diamonds and Kate Bush receives her first Grammy nomination since her film The Line, The Cross & The Curve got the nod for Best Music Video, Longform in 1995. The Baskerville Edition of Hounds of Love is nominated in two categories, Best Recording Package and Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package which seems to demonstrate that even the Grammy Academy aren’t sure of the difference between those categories and have decided to nominate it in both, just in case (this edition is neither limited nor a ‘boxed’ package). These are Kate’s fourth and fifth nominations; she’s never won.

Kate’s Baskerville Edition of Hounds of Love has been Grammy nominated

Peter Gabriel has won, six times in fact (from 21 nominations) and i/o gets a well deserved two nominations: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical and Best Immersive Audio Album (for the Dolby Atmos ‘In-Side Mix’. Roxy Music’s Avalon is also recognised in the Best Immersive Audio Album category for Bob Clearmountain’s Atmos Mix which was made available on streaming platforms earlier this year.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, John Lennon’s Mind Games box is nominated in the Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package, as is Nirvana‘s In Utero 30th anniversary edition. Neither Nirvana nor Kate’s Baskerville HOL package were particularly well received by fans (expensive, over engineered etc.). That fact is clearly is irrelevant to the Grammy Academy.

Finally, the super deluxe edition of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls is nominated in the Best Historical Album category, and award that goes to “compilation producers and mastering engineers”.

The gongs will be handed out on Sunday 2 February 2025. You can find a full list of nominees over at the Grammy website.

John Lennon’s Mind Games gets a Grammy nod

SuperDeluxeEdition.com helps fans around the world discover physical music and discuss releases. To keep the site free, SDE participates in various affiliate programs, including Amazon and earns from qualifying purchases.

Related Content

36 Comments

36 thoughts on “The Beatles and The Stones amongst Grammy nominees”

  1. I used to watch the Grammys when I lived in the US. Unfortunately the whole thing became an industry insiders stuffed affair.
    This years’ nominees are a little more diverse (how many R&B categories are there?). I expectChappell Roan to clean up. Hopefully Fontaines DC and Nick Cave will pick up an award.

    1. Fantastic observations, Rashers. Thank you.

      I’ve had a bit of a whinge about the ‘dinosaur nominations’ (below) but your point about Nick Cave positions my argument even more effectively. Nick Cave has been around ‘forever’ too but his music is still as pithy and as relevant as ever. I believe he’s still at the peak of his game. THAT is how you include relevant ‘oldies’ in these kind of awards.

      Couldn’t agree more that a gong or two going Nick’s way would be a good outcome.

      1. This has been a great year for “oldies” – Nick Cave, the Cure, Michael Head, Kim Deal, The Smile (Radiohead – 2 albums), Paul Weller, The Decemberists, Camera Obscura, Mark Knopfler, Charles Lloyd, John Bramwell and probably a few more that I’ve forgotten.

    2. The Grammys have always been an insiders affair. And back when I used to pay attention, they were very predictable. Every award involves some combination of record sales and industry politics.

    1. It was a similar situation the year Shelby Lynne was nominated as Best New Artist on the basis of her album I Am Shelby Lynne, which was her sixth album.

      From the Grammy Awards website: “[E]ligible artists must have achieved a breakthrough into the public consciousness and impacted the musical landscape during the year’s eligibility period.”

  5. Why don’t they give these awards to new artists or newish ones. Do The Beatles and Stones really care? Is it really going to enhance their careers? But this has been going on for decades. Any ‘legend’ who has been around a bit gets the Grammy nod as if we’ve got to keep showing them how grateful we are. There are so many newer artists the Grammys should be focusing on. Not the usual suspects.

  6. Re Beatles – coincidently I received an email a couple of days ago from Rough Trade advising me that Now & Then 12″ vinyl and one of the coloured 7″ vinyl were now back in stock. These had been sold out for many months, so presumably some form of repressing going on?

  7. It is hard to compare today versus 40-50 years ago in what the Grammy nominations are [and winners]. I’m sure there wasn’t anywhere near 90+ categories compared to the 1960s and 1970s. You probably also didn’t have the vast competition out there compared to now. On top of that, in the non-jazz/classical/whatever music, rock [and it’s greater family] takes a back seat with all the pop acts out there. I don’t even recognize half the acts nominated.
    7 of 8 record of the year nominees are in pop, all album of the year and song of the year are pop.

    1. What a fun game it would be to create appropriate 90+ categories for past years’ awards.

      My suggestion would be:
      Most Stubborn Our Price Records Markdown Price Sticker That Ruined An Album Cover Forever

  8. I love listening to The Beatles. Their inventive drive was crucial to the development of contemporary music and won’t be bettered.

    I love listening to The Rolling Stones. Their energy and their swagger were the perfect foil to The Beatles and Charlie could really swing.

    The Grammys SHOULD be about recognising and honouring fresh, new, exciting music. Why are we getting such odd nominations? (Answer: $$$$$$$)

    For all their swagger, The Stones are now a tribute band version of themselves. ‘Hackney Diamonds’ was good, but only on a par with (say) ‘Goats Head Soup’ at best.

    ‘Now And Then’ is pretty ghastly. Anyone who’s heard the source tape can figure out that most of Lennon’s voice hasn’t been “magically recovered’, it’s been replaced with an AI synthetic version of the original. Anyone who’s heard McCartney croaking like Tom Waits’ grandad in the background can only reflect that Lennon’s contribution to ‘Free As A Bird’ was far more commendable – and that was a vocal that sounded as if it had been dialled in by mobile phone from a public toilet cubicle.

    When are we going to be able to allow The Beatles and The Stones to take their definitive place in history without these cadavers being paraded in front of us to make a few bob and maybe frighten the kids, the pets and those of a more sensitive disposition?

    Can’t wait for the Nellie Hooper mix of the backing track of ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)’ mixed with a McCartney outtake vocal from the ‘Mull Of Kintyre’ session. Just saying. And no blaming me if it happens!

    1. Goats head soup is my favourite stones record by a mile,I love it , haven’t heard hackney yet but I did love the video of that song with the girl in the back of the car driving round L.A was that video nominated in the ( I presume video section),

      1. Apologies. Didn’t mean to diss your favourite. For me, it’s a good album too (but not up to the stellar heights of ‘Exile On Main Street’ or ‘Let It Bleed’).

        I was just trying to say that (from my perspective) there needs to be a focus on the contemporary artists. Just as my mind would have boggled in the 1970s if digitally enhanced stuff by Bing Crosby was being nominated alongside the ‘hot’ acts of the day. Move aside please, your day is passed.

    2. Again —- when you hear a youtube video of Kurt singing Black Hole Sun, or of Elvis singing I Will Always Love You — those are AI creations, because those singers never actually sang those songs.

      John’s vocal on Now And Then is NOT that. It is John’s actual voice, extracted from the actual tape using Peter Jackson’s MAL machine, and made listenable and able to be properly mixed in with the rest of the instrumental parts mostly created by Paul and Ringo.

      1. Oh, excellent. We get to discuss the Ship Of Theseus paradox.

        I’m not talking about a full-on AI creation, Ken. They are ten-a-penny. This is far more subtle and far more insidious.

        Imagine you could take a vocal pattern as if it were a barcode and, by studying and mimicking the pattern using AI, fill in all the nasty white gaps in the code. You’d end up with ‘Now And Then’. All you have to do to make the new boob-job on John’s grotty source tape sound ‘Beatlesy’ is to take what’s left of Paul’s voice and stick it on another vocal track.

        Don’t get me wrong. I adore Beatles music. That Frankenstein piece, however, is not Beatles music. If you want to credit Peter Jackson’s MAL-ware with being a miracle device, that’s your prerogative. I think its snake oil.

      1. I guess it’s all a case of perspective. If you really think that current Stones product is every bit as good as the work they did 1963-1973 then I’m pleased for you. Genuinely so.

        But, for me, they’ve simply learned how to mimic themselves to a greater and greater degree since the Seventies and that’s why I believe they’re now nothing more than their own best tribute band. And some people know that, accept it and lap it up.

        If you go to a natural history museum and see a stuffed grizzly bear, it still looks fierce and all it’s key features are there to admire. I wouldn’t call that “rocking”.

        1. Yeah, I think you have a bit of a skewed view. You could literally say that about any band that has been around for a while. The Stones are no worse than anyone else.
          Hackney Diamonds was fresh.

          1. Hi BarkerBoy

            Even a comfy reclining armchair is fresh when you first buy it. Even a rocking chair rocks. That’s my point about The Stones. They have become derivative of themselves, ipso facto – their own tribute band.

            The entire point here isn’t about who or what The Stones “are no worse than”. “Better/Worse than…” is about objective views. Our views are simply different.

            My point is that they have nothing substantively new to say in 2024 that they didn’t say a thousand times better when they stormed through ‘Gimme Shelter’ and such.

            As I’ve mentioned above in response to Rashers, Nick Cave is the best expression on this page of what it means to be long in the tooth and yet remain 100% vital and innovative.

    5. They are just like the Oscars or the nonsense we have in the UK for soap stars, just luvvies patting themselves on the back. I doubt most punters take any notice of the cobblers.

    6. Or, it could be about just honoring the best music, whether it comes from a 70-year old or a 17-year old.

      Youth is not an accomplishment and what is fresh today so often is stale tomorrow. If someone in the “biz” is still putting out brilliant work decades into their careers, such as David Gilmour’s latest album (or, going back a few years, a cover by a croaking, actively dying country star, such as Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”) absolutely it should be recognized over a new pop artist who may have sold millions due to a brilliant A&R department but who’s songs will be forgotten this time next year.

      Not to say we should ignore young brilliance by only handing out “Body of Work” awards to dinosaurs but if they earn it, why deny them just because they are old and have been in the game longer than most of us have been alive?

      Then again, how long has it been since the Grammy’s actually honored the best music being made? And it’s all subjective anyway, what the hell do I know…

  9. Which version of the Mind Games box was nominated, the regular box or the awesome super deluxe box (or do they treat it all as one box?). That big super deluxe box was insane and very well thought out. Loved that unpacking video.

    These categories and nominees seem to be totally arbitrary. John Lennon gets nominated for Mind Games in the Best Box category but Prince, whose box was excellent, only gets Best Historical Album? Then Lennon does not even get nominated for Best Historical Album? Strange.Nothing for The Police Synchronicity box? Weird as that box was incredibly well done. As Paul points out, the Kate Bush and Nirvana releases were highly criticized for price and content , offered nothing interesting and yet they get nominated? Why not Synchronicity?
    And when you get nominated for Best Immersive Audio, the qualifying rule should be that there is a physical release. Why nominate something that is on streaming only? Streaming is inferior sound quality! That should not be promoted by the Grammys.

    Looking at the nominations it seems the Grammys don’t understand their own categories. And its criminal Teddy Swims was only nominated in the Best New Artist category. His album is insane and the single “The Door” is a total cracker and a rare example of soul/pop. He’s a bit like the male version of Amy Winehouse in the sense that his voice is a total surprise (I thought he was black when I first heard him) and there is a nod to the old soul sound which Amy Winehouse also had with her second album. I’m a bit obsessed by Teddy Swims and he definitely deserved more nominations.

    1. Well, you’ve gotta remember that these are the folks who gave the first Grammy for Best Metal Performance to Jethro Tull—and this year they’ve nominated Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Opus in the “Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album” category…

  10. Interesting. I guess it’s nice to know that the Academy is still honoring physical media. I wasn’t aware that the Roxxy music album, “Avalon“ was streaming anywhere. You would think it would’ve been released as a multiformat set by now or at least a two disc set, one CD and the other Blu-ray audio. Sure would’ve made a nice package.

  11. Plus my new category:

    Most compressed/limited and least dynamic album of the year goes to….???

    Too many “worthy” nominations here unfortunately, including the stereo mixes of PG’s I/O

  13. It just goes to show what a basket case the Grammy’s really are. Beyonce 32, Jay-Z 24, Kanye West 24……. and The Beatles with 7 and the Stones 3… Just saying!!!

    1. That’s a good point and made me think why have The Beatles and Stones have so few Grammy’s, obviously there’s more categories these days like everything associated with a promo video but take a look at the nominees from 1965, do you notice anything?

      https://www.awardsandshows.com/features/grammy-awards-1965-217.html

      It seems like history is just repeating itself, more established artists and certain genres of music were more likely to win than the new “beat” music which some were saying at the time will die in a couple of years! It would take the following year to add more categories to cater for this new fangled music just like the ‘rap’ category was added years later.

      1. Am I right in assuming that thanks to “The Chipmunks sings The Beatles”, that at this point it means The Chipmunks have more Grammy’s than The Beatles?

  14. This is really absurd. The Beatles will compete against Beyoncé, Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish. This does not make sense. On the other hand, I’m glad that Nick Cave had two nominations with the wonderful Wild God.

Leave a Reply