Beyonce and Taylor Swift have made Grammy history, with the nominations for this year’s awards revealed.
Beyonce leads this year’s female-dominated nominations, receiving 11 nods and making her the most nominated artist in the show’s history, with 99 in total.
Her success as the most-nominated artist comes after her country album, Cowboy Carter, was roundly snubbed at this year’s County Music Association Awards.
The43-year-old star’s chart-topping album secured nods for album of the year and best country album, while track Texas Hold ‘Em is up for record of the year and song of the year.
Beyonce picked up her 32nd gong at last year’s ceremony, but despite winning the most awards in a lifetime, she’s yet to win the coveted album of the year award.
With nods across a host of genres, including pop, country, Americana and melodic rap, many will be predicting she’ll surely take the prize next year. If she does, it will make her the first black woman to do so this century.
Meanwhile, Swift’s seventh nod in the album category for her surprise double album The Tortured Poets Department means she overtakes Barbra Streisand, who had formerly tied with the Shake It Off star with six nominations.
Swift won the best album category last year with Midnights.
Following Beyonce in the lead for nominations, Charli XCX – whose trend setting album Brat saw the moniker become word of the year – has seven nods (her first as a solo artist), as does Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, and Post Malone.
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American singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter continues her stellar year with six nods, as do Chappell Roan and Swift, who finishes her record-breaking Eras tour in North America next month.
As well as Charlie XCX getting some Grammy nomination love, British star Raye also received her first nominations for best new artist and songwriter of the year non-classical.
Carpenter and Roan also made it into the prestigious best new artist category.
While The Beatles – who formed in Liverpool and went on to become the biggest musical act in the world – are up for record of the year with Now And Then.
Nominations were announced by past Grammy winners including Kylie Minogue, Mark Ronson and last year’s best new artist recipient, Victoria Monet.
The annual ceremony – which gives out a whopping 94 gongs in total – has four big categories – album, record and song of the year and best new artist.
The Recording Academy have adjusted to those categories this year, reducing the number of potential nominees from 10 to eight.
It’s also updated some of its rules to keep up with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in music and introduced three new categories – best African music performance, best pop dance recording, and best alternative jazz album.
The eligibility period for work ran from 16 September 2023 to 30 August 2024.
Women dominated last year’s awards too, with Swift taking album of the year, Eilish winning song of the year and Miley Cyrus taking home record of the year.
The 67th Grammy Awards take place on Sunday 2 February 2025, at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
Main category nominees
Album Of The Year New Blue Sun – Andre 3000 Cowboy Carter- Beyonce Short N’ Sweet – Sabrina Carpenter Brat – Charli XCX Djesse Vol. 4 – Jacob Collier Hit Me Hard And Soft – Billie Eilish Chappell Roan The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess – Chappell Roan The Tortured Poets Department – Taylor Swift
Record Of The Year Now And Then – The Beatles Texas Hold ‘Em – Beyonce Espresso – Sabrina Carpenter 360 – Charli XCX Birds Of A Feather – Billie Eilish Not Like Us – Kendrick Lamar Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan Fortnight – Taylor Swift Featuring Post Malone
Song Of The Year A Bar Song (Tipsy) – Sean Cook, Jerrel Jones, Joe Kent, Chibueze Collins Obinna, Nevin Sastry & Mark Williams, songwriters (Shaboozey) Birds Of A Feather – Billie Eilish O’Connell & Finneas O’Connell, songwriters (Billie Eilish) Die With A Smile – Dernst ‘D’Mile’ Emile II, James Fauntleroy, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars & Andrew Watt, songwriters (Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars) Fortnight – Jack Antonoff, Austin Post & Taylor Swift, songwriters (Taylor Swift Featuring Post Malone) Good Luck, Babe! – Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, Daniel Nigro & Justin Tranter, songwriters (Chappell Roan) Not Like Us – Kendrick Lamar, songwriter (Kendrick Lamar) Please Please Please – Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff & Sabrina Carpenter, songwriters (Sabrina Carpenter) Texas Hold ‘Em – Brian Bates, Beyonce, Elizabeth Lowell Boland, Megan Bülow, Nate Ferraro & Raphael Saadiq, songwriters (Beyonce)
Best New Artist Benson Boone Sabrina Carpenter Doechii Khruangbin Raye Chappell Roan Shaboozey Teddy Swims
Adele has bid a tearful farewell to her Las Vegas residency show, as the Someone Like You star admitted she doesn’t know when she’ll perform again next.
The British singer-songwriter, 36, launched Weekends with Adele at Caesars Palace in November 2022 and performed her 100th show there on Saturday.
Her mammoth run of sell-out shows at the venue, which seats around 4,000 people, has been a success but has taken its toll.
John David Washington says he felt like he had to conceal his desire to act because of the external expectations of him being the child of Denzel and Pauletta Washington.
He tells Sky News it took some time for him to pursue an acting career, choosing football instead to assert his “independence” and create his own “identity” separate from his famous family.
“I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life… but I was hiding it,” he said.
“I had to conceal that passion based on my relationship to the world and more specifically, my folks being in the industry, so I chose ball.
“I loved ball, but I was sort of hiding my love for the arts under a helmet – literally an American football helmet – and so when I wanted to become an actor, when I decided to pursue it, that was a big shock to some people.”
The 40-year-old actor says when he decided to pursue an acting career, he kept the decision quiet.
“Some people didn’t know I was even pursuing it professionally until I got a job,” he said.
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Since switching to acting, John David has starred in a number of notable roles including the protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, Ron Stallworth in BlacKkKlansman and Joshua in The Creator.
He also led the stage revival of the 2022 Tony-nominated play The Piano Lesson on Broadway alongside Samuel L Jackson.
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“He [Jackson] originated the role [I play] in 1987 at Yale with Lloyd Richards and August Wilson,” John David said.
“So it was of great importance for us to learn from both he and Michael Potts about August Wilson. It was a great blessing for me, I think, for all of us to have him present on set.”
The Piano Lesson is the third August Wilson play to be adapted for the screen by Denzel Washington’s production company Mundy Lane Entertainment.
It is part of a pledge made by the Gladiator II actor to make all 10 of the playwright’s works into films.
The Netflixproject is directed by another Washington family member, Malcolm, and stars most of the cast from the Broadway revival.
Set in 1936 Pittsburgh in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the film centres on a family heirloom, a piano, that is etched with the carvings of their family history made by their enslaved ancestor.
Malcolm says he started reading the play for the first time during the pandemic and immediately wanted to be involved in the film adaptation.
“I think with this movie, reclamation of story and identity is so central to the theme and it’s something that’s central to my life where I both acknowledge the fertile ground that I was raised on and who I am today.
“That’s what Wining Boy [played by Michael Potts] really is trying to do, he’s trying to build on that legacy, so that’s a story that really resonated with me.”
The filmmaker added: “I take all the gifts that my ancestors laid in front of me, and I’m trying to build something for the next generation to pass down – all of their gifts, plus mine to the next generation and let them build on it.”
Malcolm says his goal was to put family at the forefront of the production. By dedicating his feature debut to “Mama”, he is acknowledging the dedication and sacrifices that mothers make for the growth of their families.
“There’s so much pointing to my mother in particular, who inspired this adaptation so much. I see so much of her life in Berniece’s character [played by Danielle Deadwyler] – and that became a guiding light for me in this adaptation,” he said.
“As we made this thing and started reconnecting with our ancestors, my mum became like a kind of representative of them.
“She’s the matriarch of our family. She tells me about my grandparents and great-grandparents and the line that I come from, and I see them in her.
“And when the movie ends, I want people to kind of have that moment of reflection for their own lives. So in dedicating it to her, I was trying to dedicate it to all mums everywhere.”
Blockbuster Wicked has landed the largest opening weekend of 2024 at Vue International.
The film, starring Oscar-nominated actress Cynthia Erivo and Grammy-winning pop star Ariana Grande as Elphaba and Glinda, surpassed both Gladiator II and Paddington In Peru.
It has also had the largest opening weekend for a stage musical adaptation in the cinema chain’s history.
A boss for Vue International said it had seen a “sea of pink and green” over the weekend.
Released on Friday, Wicked is up 60% on Les Miserables’ opening weekend in 2012 and three times larger than the 2022 film adaptation of Matilda.
Founder and chief executive of Vue International Tim Richards said: “Vue has seen a sea of pink and green over the opening weekend of Wicked, which has shown continued high demand for the big screen experience.
“We saw record-breaking pre-sales for Wicked, followed by a chart-topping opening weekend – the biggest for 2024.”
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The film is the first of two parts, with the second expected in November next year.
Wicked and Gladiator II – known together as Glicked – have reportedly failed to beat out Barbenheimer, Barbie and Oppenheimer, in its own opening weekend last summer.