Every year one artist seems to dominate all the mainstream music awards, and in 2004 that artist has been Kanye West. Once again the young rapper proved to be the main event as the nominations for next year's Grammy Awards were announced at the Beverley Hills Hilton yesterday. West has no less than ten nominations, including listings for some of the flagship gongs including Artist Of The Year, Album Of The Year and Single Of The Year.
Other artists with multiple appearances on the lengthy Grammy nomination lists include Alicia Keys and Usher, who both have eight nominations each, and Green Day and the late Ray Charles, who are nominated for seven awards each.
In the important category of Album Of The Year, all of the aforementioned appear - Kanye West, Usher, Alicia Keys, Green Day and Ray Charles who are nominated for 'The College Dropout', 'Confessions', 'The Diary', 'American Idiot' and 'Genius Loves Company' respectively.
As far as the British contingent are concerned, actually we did quite well this time round. Joss Stone is up for Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album; the mighty Franz Ferdinand are competing against (kinda British) U2 in the catchily titled category of Best Rock Performance By Duo Or Group; U2 are also up for Best Rock Song; Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Elton John are nominated for Best Pop Collaborations; Jamie Cullum is up for Best Jazz Vocal Album; while Elvis Costello and The Imposters are on the shortlist for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance By Group.
In addition to all that, the Grammys prove once again that, while the UK music press and Brit Award organisers like to tell us how dance music is dead (they're wrong by the way), as far as the Americans are concerned British dance music, erm, rocks. Basement Jaxx, The Prodigy and Paul Oakenfold are all up for Best Electronic/Dance Album while The Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx are up for Best Dance Recording.
There are of course about 3,700 categories in the Grammy Awards (we might be exaggerating slightly here, but not much) and if we were to include all the nominations in the Daily we'd have to send it out in about five separate emails. If you're interested you can browse them all at your leisure at http://www.grammys.com/awards/grammy/47noms.aspx#02
The Grammy Awards will be presented on Sunday 13 Feb in LA.