The nominations for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards are being announced today, and I'm sure you're all eagerly waiting to see if your favorite artists and songs of the year will be honored by the most prestigious award for music in America.

Will Iggy Azalea's highly disputed Song of the Summer "Fancy" truly become the new classic? Will Sam Smith finally get the mainstream accolades he deserves? Will Beyonce's surprise album reign supreme?

Keep an eye on the Internet throughout the day as the 82 out of 83 categories will be revealed through the Grammy Awards' official Twitter account. The nominees for the 83rd category, the mack daddy of them all Album of the Year, will be announced during A Very Grammy Christmas airing tonight at 9 p.m. EST on CBS.

One of the categories announced at the time of this writing is Record of the Year. This year's nominees are "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX, "Chandelier" by Sia, "Stay With Me" (Darkchild version) by Sam Smith, "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift and "All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor.

No surprises here as these are some of the biggest songs of 2014. However, anyone familiar with the Grammys knows that there are two categories that award the best overall songs of the year. In addition to Record of the Year, The Recording Academy also gives an award to Song of the Year. Wait, what? Aren't those two categories the exact same thing?

Well no, actually. This is a question that comes up a lot, so The Recording Academy already has an answer prepared for you in the Frequently Asked Questions section of its website:

"The Record Of The Year category recognizes the artist's performance as well as the overall contributions of the producer(s), recording engineer(s) and/or mixer(s) if other than the artist. The Song Of The Year category recognizes the songwriter(s)."

So there you have it. Mystery solved. The Record of the Year category is really more about the finished product, the recording itself, whereas Song of the Year is more about the songwriting, the foundation of the song. To make this a bit clearer, last year's Record of the Year winner was Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers for their heavily produced, disco-infused track "Get Lucky," and Song of the Year went to Joel Little and Ella Yelich O'Connor, a.k.a. Lorde, for the brooding and evocative "Royals."

Last year's winners show a more pronounced difference between the two categories than usual. In fact, if you looked at all of the winners from the past 56 years, there's seemingly no rhyme or reason why a single would win one category. That's probably why at exactly half of the 56 Grammy Awards ceremonies held so far, the same song has won Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

This was the case at the very first Grammy Awards in 1959 when "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)" by Domenico Modugno won both categories. Through the years, songs such as "Moon River" by Henry Mancini, "What's Love Got To Do With It" by Tina Turner and "Not Ready To Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks have all joined this club. The last artist to win both Record of the Year and Song of the Year was Adele at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards in 2012 with her mega-hit "Rolling in the Deep."

We'll have to wait until Feb. 8 when the winners of this year's Grammy Awards will be announced to see if these awards will go to two separate artists or if one lucky musician will dominate.

ⓒ 2024 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Join the Discussion