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    Taylor Swift Wins 4th Grammy for Album of the Year, Breaking a Record

    Taylor Swift already has more No. 1 albums than any other woman (12), as well as the highest-grossing tour in history (an estimated $1 billion and counting).Now she can count another major achievement: four Grammy Awards for album of the year — more than any other artist in the 66-year history of the prize.“Midnights,” Swift’s most recent LP of new material, beat out entries from SZA, Olivia Rodrigo, boygenius, Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus, Jon Batiste and Janelle Monáe to take the Grammys’ top album prize on Sunday. It was her second win of the night.Earlier in the night, as she accepted the Grammy for best pop vocal album for “Midnights,” Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on April 19. It was Swift’s sixth nomination for the prize, and fourth win, after her previous victories for “Fearless” in 2010, “1989” in 2016, and “Folklore” in 2020. With her latest win, she moves past three beloved stars who had each won the category three times: Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon.In 2014, Swift’s “Red” lost the award to Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories,” and in 2022 “Evermore” lost to Batiste’s “We Are.”Last year, Beyoncé won her 32nd Grammy, more than any other artist in history. (Take that, Quincy Jones and Sir Georg Solti!) With 14 lifetime wins so far, Swift would need another 18 to match Beyoncé. More

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    Best Red Carpet Fashion At the Grammys: Taylor Swift, Victoria Monét, Miley Cyrus

    The music industry’s biggest stars attended the 66th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in attire as varied as their songs and albums. Much of that attire — whether it was a cutout gown or a sheer shirt — exposed midsections.Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus were two of the many who chose outfits with metallic tones, perhaps in hopes of earning a golden statue to match. Gracie Abrams, Paris Jackson and others opted for black, while Kylie Minogue and Bonnie McKee were among those in red, one of the most popular colors seen on carpets this awards season. (Ms. McKee complemented her red dress with a nest of fiery hair.)Several of the night’s most memorable looks reminded viewers that there’s nothing wrong with replaying old hits. Laverne Cox, the E! host who interviewed stars on the red carpet, wore a structured Comme des Garçons dress from 2015, and Olivia Rodrigo chose a white Versace gown that is almost 10 years older than she is.The Grammy Awards are known to be a fashion playground, and this year’s event was no exception. But the following 22 looks (three of which belonged to the members of boygenius) stood out more than most, for better or worse.Miley Cyrus: Most Barbarella!Don’t send her through a metal detector.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersSome people saw Cleopatra. Others saw Barbarella, or Princess Leia in her Jabba the Hutt period. Whatever the references, the “Flowers” singer’s metal mesh by Maison Margiela was marvelous.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Victoria Monét Wins Grammy for Best New Artist

    In an eclectic field, honors for best new artist — one of the Grammys’ four most coveted awards — went to the pop and R&B singer-songwriter Victoria Monét.The win for Monét, 34, underscores her evolution from a behind-the-scenes hitmaker for performers like Ariana Grande to a decorated artist in her own right.Monét was up against nominees from many styles and backgrounds, including the category’s oldest nominee in 25 years, the rapper turned country singer Jelly Roll, 39. Another prominent competitor was Ice Spice, the Bronx drill-meets-pop rapper whose cultural ubiquity last year extended to a Taylor Swift collaboration and a “Barbie” soundtrack appearance. The other nominees in the category were the pop-folkie Noah Kahan, the British dance producer Fred again.., the R&B singer Coco Jones, the rootsy married duo the War and Treaty, and the singer Gracie Abrams, who opened for Swift on the Eras Tour.Monét was nominated for seven Grammys at the 2024 awards, tied for second-most overall. Her full-length debut, “Jaguar II,” won for best R&B album and for best engineered album, non-classical.“On My Mama,” the album’s third single, was up for record of the year as well as best R&B song. From the same album, “How Does It Make You Feel” was a nominee for best R&B performance, while “Hollywood,” a collaboration with Earth, Wind & Fire, scored a nod for best traditional R&B performance. “Hollywood” also features Monét’s daughter, Hazel, who at 2 years old became the youngest Grammy nominee ever.Beyond the Grammy accolades for Monét, her longtime collaborator and “Jaguar II” producer Dernst Emile II, known as D’Mile, also got his second straight nomination for producer of the year, non-classical. D’Mile has won five Grammys, including record of the year and song of the year in 2022 for his contributions to Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open” and song of the year in 2021 for H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe.”Monét came into the 2024 Grammy season with three previous nominations for her work as a songwriter. In 2020, her Grande tunesmithing landed nominations for album of the year for “Thank U, Next” and record of the year for “7 Rings,” while in 2021 her work with Chloe x Halle was up for best R&B song for “Do It.”“I think my entire story has been leading up to this moment,” Monét told The New York Times in November after learning she’d earned seven nominations. “I felt like an underdog for so long.” More

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    Jay-Z Criticizes Grammys, Points Out How Beyoncé Never Won Album of the Year

    During a speech at the Grammys on Sunday, Jay-Z criticized the awards show for what he described as its snubs and inconsistencies in giving out honors to Black artists, pointing out that his wife, Beyoncé, has the most Grammys but has never won for album of the year.“Even by your own metrics it doesn’t work,” he said.He added, “We want you to get it right — at least get it close to right.”Jay-Z also referred to Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s boycott of the 1989 Grammys because the rap category was not televised at the time. He noted that he had boycotted the show when DMX released two No. 1 albums but was not nominated.“Some of you may get robbed,” he said, adding, “Some of you don’t belong in the category.”He also conceded that the process of awarding Grammys is subjective. “It’s music and it’s opinion based,” he said.Jay-Z made the remarks during his acceptance speech for the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, which recognizes personal and professional achievements in the music industry.Through his record label, Roc Nation, Jay-Z has advocated social justice causes, particularly for racial equality in the United States. In 2022, he convened an inaugural summit for social justice leaders to meet in New York to raise awareness about racial justice and policy.He has also served as an executive producer on two docuseries about the killings of Black Americans: “Time: The Kalief Browder Story” and “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.” When George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police in 2020, Jay-Z, through Roc Nation, took out full-page ads in major newspapers that quoted a passage from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 speech in Selma, Ala. More

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    Joni Mitchell Performs at the Grammys for the First Time

    It’s hard to believe that at 80 years old, after a groundbreaking career in music, there are still new achievements left for Joni Mitchell. But on Sunday night, she did something for the first time: performed on the Grammys.Joined by Brandi Carlile, Jacob Collier, Lucius, Blake Mills, Allison Russell and SistaStrings, the singer-songwriter played “Both Sides Now.”Carlile, one of Mitchell’s most high-profile champions, is largely responsible for bringing her hero back to the stage, and she introduced Mitchell, who earlier won the Grammy for best folk album for “Joni Mitchell at Newport.” Nine years ago, Mitchell had an aneurysm and largely vanished from the public eye; her legions of fans feared that her singing days were complete.But the writer and unmistakable soprano behind classics like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” was not finished. She made a surprise appearance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival alongside Carlile, as well as musicians including Wynonna Judd and Marcus Mumford.Mitchell followed that performance with an almost three-hour set at Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon Festival in George, Wash., last spring. (Two more performances from Joni Mitchell & the Joni Jam are scheduled for October at the Hollywood Bowl.) “To hear Mitchell hit certain notes again in that inimitable voice was like glimpsing, in the wild, a magnificent bird long feared to have gone extinct,” Lindsay Zoladz wrote in a New York Times review of the Washington show.Mitchell’s recording career, which began in the 1960s, has included her early folk music, the autofiction of her classic albums “Blue” and “Court and Spark,” and the jazz that followed. Decades later, in 1996, Mitchell, then 52, won the Grammys for best pop album and best recording package for “Turbulent Indigo,” her 15th release. “I’ve been contemplating whether to quit music and go into painting, and perhaps I will now,” she said that night. More

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    Annie Lennox Honors Sinead O’Connor at Grammys

    In an emotional ode to Sinead O’Connor at the Grammys, Annie Lennox performed “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the Irish singer-songwriter’s cover of the Prince original that became a No. 1 hit.A forceful performer known for her lilting voice and her political provocations, O’Connor died in July at 56. Her rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” her best-known track, highlighted her ability to veer from breathy high notes to penetrating, heavy vocals, delivering performances with an emotional gut punch.There was a bit of irony in Lennox’s performance: In 1991, the year that O’Connor won the Grammy for best alternative music performance — for the album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” which featured “Nothing Compares 2 U” — she boycotted the ceremony over what she called the show’s excessive commercialism.In a fitting tribute, Lennox took a moment at the end of her performance for an antiwar statement, saying, “Artists for cease-fire,” in reference to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.O’Connor had a tendency of turning public performances into headlines, famously ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II on “S.N.L.” in protest of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. As Amanda Hess wrote in a 2021 profile of O’Connor, the act was more personal than it may have seemed. Her mother, who the singer said in her memoir had physically abused her, died when O’Connor was 18. It was her mother’s photo, plucked from a bedroom wall, that O’Connor destroyed on national television.“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she said. “But it was very traumatizing.” Her career never recovered, but she felt a sense of freedom. “I could just be me,” she wrote in her book, “Rememberings.” “I’m not a pop star. I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then.”In the days and months following O’Connor’s death, which a coroner later said was the result of natural causes, scores of artists spoke of her bravery and pure talent.Lennox, a Scottish singer-songwriter who started her own solo career around the time of O’Connor’s rise, posted to social media a moving tribute to the singer after she died, calling her raw, fierce and brilliant. More

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    Taylor Swift Announces New Album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ at Grammys

    As she accepted the Grammy for best pop vocal album for “Midnights,” Taylor Swift announced that she would be releasing her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on April 19.“I know that the way that the Recording Academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans, so I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years,” Swift said. “Which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19. It’s called ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’”Swift said she would post the album’s cover from backstage when she was done accepting the prize.Going into the night’s awards show, Swift fans had noticed that the artist had changed her profile picture on X, Instagram and Facebook to a black-and-white version, and many interpreted this as a hint that Swift would announce a new “Taylor’s version” of her “Reputation” album, which has a black-and-white cover.Swift received six Grammy nominations, including nods for “Anti-Hero” in the best song and record of the year categories and a nomination for “Midnights” in the album of the year category.“This is my 13th Grammy,” Swift said in her speech. “This is my lucky number, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that.” More

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    2024 Grammys Winners: Updating List

    A complete rundown of the artists, albums, songs and videos that took home trophies at the 66th annual awards.The 2024 Grammys taking place Sunday night in Los Angeles honor recordings released from Oct. 1, 2022, through Sept. 15, 2023. SZA is the lead nominee, with nine nods for her album “SOS,” which topped the Billboard 200 for 10 straight weeks.The R&B singer Victoria Monét and the indie rocker Phoebe Bridgers of boygenius both have seven, while Jon Batiste, boygenius, the Americana singer-songwriter Brandy Clark, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift have six nods apiece.Here are the winners so far:Producer of the Year, Non-ClassicalJack AntonoffSongwriter of the Year, Non-ClassicalTheron ThomasBest Pop Duo/Group Performance“Ghost in the Machine,” SZA featuring Phoebe BridgersBest Dance/Electronic Recording“Rumble,” Skrillex, Fred again.. and FlowdanRead our profile of Fred again..Best Pop Dance Recording“Padam Padam,” Kylie MinogueHear the “Padam Padam” Popcast.Best Dance/Electronic Music Album“Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022),” Fred again..Best Rock Performance“Not Strong Enough,” boygeniusRead our review of boygenius’s album.Best Metal Performance“72 Seasons,” MetallicaRead our feature on Metallica’s set lists.Best Rock Song“Not Strong Enough,” Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, songwriters (boygenius)Hear the boygenius Popcast.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More