Beyonce, Rihanna and Drake lead Grammy nominations

The 2017 Grammy Awards nominations were released on Tuesday, and while Rihanna received eight nominations, none of them were for Album of the Year or for Song of the Year for her ANTI album, and fans are upset over the perceived snub.

I also had the opportunity to see Chance, Kanye West and Bryson Tiller perform Grammy-nominated songs live this year, which is pretty cool.

The record of the year category recognises an artist’s performance as well as the overall contributions of producers and recording engineers, while the song of the year award is exclusively for songwriters. He also swept up nominations for rap/sung performance for “Hotline Bling”, and for his collaboration with Rihanna on “Work”, which is nominated for record of the year and pop duo/group performance.

The 35-year-old R&B singer has been nominated 62 times in the entire history of Grammy awards and has won 20 awards from Grammy over her two-decade career. Adele’s album 25 has also been nominated for the Album of the Year award.

With its unclassifiable album The Life of Pablo, rapper Kanye West is hailed despite having been named in any of the four major categories.

The Album of the Year nominees are: Beyoncé for “Lemonade”, Adele for “25”, Justin Bieber for “Purpose”, Drake for “Views” and Sturgill Simpson for “Sailor’s Guide to Earth”.

This year’s winners will be announced at a star-studded televised ceremony in Los Angeles on 12 February.

Among other surprises, rock legend David Bowie, who died in January from an undisclosed battle with cancer, was passed over in the top categories. It may take another listen, but I think an album like “22, A Million” by Bon Iver, a masterpiece that was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album, would have been better suited in its place.

For record of the year, Formation and Hello face off against 7 Years, a mellow hit by Danish group Lukas Graham; Stressed Out, by the genre-mixing pop duo Twenty One Pilots; and Rihanna’s Work, which features Drake.

“One of the things that a lot of people are confused about is there really are few artists who choose to go streaming-only”, he continued.

When Bieber was nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy back in 2011, he lost to Esperanza Spalding, sparking an outcry from his army of fans.

The Recording Academy’s selections each year inevitably come in for criticism from those who see omissions.

But in recent years, more R&B and hip hop artists have been recognised in line with the commercial success of the music form.