Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift top Grammy nominations

Kendrick Lamar? He’s up for eleven awards in nine categories.

This morning (December 7th), the nominees for the 58th Annual Grammy Awards were announced.

Album of the Year: Alabama Shakes’ Sound & Color, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Chris Stapleton’s Traveller, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind the Madness.

Taylor Swift’s wildest dreams have come true.

This year, Kendrick Lamar leads nominations with 11, followed by Taylor Swift and The Weeknd, who each earn seven. “Really Love” is up for Record of the Year and Best R&B Song, while the album as a whole is up for Best R&B Album alongside Leon Bridges’ Coming Home, Charlie Wilson, Andra Day and Jazmine Sullivan. Lamar also has two chances in the best music video category, for those same two songs. Four each. Kanye West, D’Angelo, Diplo?

The Recording Academy, the music industry body that determines the nominations, also had surprising choices for Album of the Year, generally considered the most prestigious category. Producer Max Martin – the guy everyone with a massive budget calls when they want a pop hit – has his mitts in everything from Swift’s to Adele’s latest, and he is up for six nominations this year, including the coveted Song of the Year trophy, a songwriter’s award that Martin might claim for his work on Swift’s “Blank Space”.

Don’t let the Grammy nominations fool you. James Bay, Tori Kelly and Meghan Trainor are all reasonably popular and sufficiently talented, at least if a strong natural singing voice is still what we’re looking for in our new artists. “This has been just the most incredible year”. While it showed an ear for interpretation beyond his years, his position as one of the contenders in the jazz instrumental album and improvised jazz solo categories points to the importance of buzz once it comes time for Grammy nominations. In a twist, Lamar’s contributions to Swift’s “Bad Blood” scored nominations for Best Music Video as well as Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, the Associated Press reported.

This year’s awards look at songs that were released between October 1 2014 and September 1, 2015, and will air on CBS on February 15, 2016. On the other end of the spectrum, Best Alternative Album could be going to Alabama Shakes, Björk, My Morning Jacket, Tame Impala, or Wilco. It seemed more likely that D’Angelo would be included in album of the year for the striking comeback, the bold and politicized “Black Messiah”, which is a candidate for best R&B album.

Lamar’s most recent studio album, “To Pimp a Butterfly”, was released this past March.