Featured Photo by Getty Images

Story by Bailey Brantingham

In past years, Nashville presented many of music’s best and brightest for the annual Grammy Awards. While Nashvillians usually sweep country music categories across the board, all-around categories, like Best New Artist and Song of the Year, typically see nominees with roots in Music City every season. As seen by this year’s contenders, like the Queen of Country Music herself, Dolly Parton and newcomer Jelly Roll, Nashville can consistently be counted on to show out at the Grammys with its nominees. No matter the year, it is evident that Nashville takes the awards to heart, and the city treats Grammy season like no other.

“There’s deeper roots here than in other cities. In LA and New York, you have a lot of artists who live there, but I think here it comes from the ground up,” the Tennessean’s music and Grammy Awards writer Melonee Hurt said.

“We’ve got songwriters that are just penetrating this city and they’re everywhere and so many artists who come up through Nashville and end up making it. So I think everybody in Nashville has a connection to somebody who’s a songwriter or a producer or a fiddle player in an Americana band that got nominated.”

Leading into the 2024 Grammy Awards, the recently released list of nominees cemented Nashville in place as one of the top producers of Grammy contenders. Nashville has all of its cards on the table this year, once again producing nominees for the folk, Americana, country, Christian, bluegrass, songwriting and all-genre categories.

As always, Nashville has the country music category in its clutches, with nearly every nominee boasting roots in Music City. Newcomer and CMA Entertainer of the Year, Lainey Wilson, brings in her first two Grammy nominations this year for Best Country Album and Best Country Duo/Group Performance for her collaboration with Jelly Roll. Respectively nominated, Jelly Roll also represents Nashville on a bigger scale in the all-genre Best New Artist category. Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves add on to the extensive list of Nashville nominees receiving nods in the Best Country Duo/Group Performance and Best Country Song categories, with Stapleton also nominated for Best Country Solo Performance. Also nominated for this category are Luke Combs and Dolly Parton, making this Combs’ seventh nomination and Parton’s 54th.

Brandy Clark represents her longtime Nashville residency across multiple categories with nominations for Best Country Solo Performance, Best Country Song, Best Americana Album, Best Americana Performance, Best American Roots Song and Best Musical Theater Album. Clark joins the ranks among the most recognized artists this year with six nominations, giving her a career total of 17 nominations.

Also bleeding into multiple genres, Billy Strings rounds up three nominations this year, including Best Bluegrass Album, Best Country Duo/Group Performance and Best American Roots Song. Rounding out the country music categories for Nashville are Carly Pearce for Best Country Duo/Group Performance, Brothers Osborne for the same category as well as Best Country Album and born and raised Tennesseean Kelsea Ballerini for Best Country Album.

In other categories, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway are fresh off a win last year for Best Bluegrass Album with a nomination this year in the same category. Allison Russell and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit take the Americana and American Roots categories by storm, with nominations for Best Americana Album and Best Americana Performance, with Russell also nominated for Best American Roots Performance and Isbell nominated for Best American Roots Song. In the folk category, Best Folk Album, Nashville’s Dom Flemons and Old Crow Medicine Show scored nominations. In the second year of the Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical category, Jesse Jo Dillon and Shane McAnally represent Nashville’s lyrically-gifted.

A rare occurrence: this year, Nashville has not one, but two horses in the running for an all-genre category. Jelly Roll and Nashville’s esteemed Americana duo The War and Treaty scored a nomination for Best New Artist. While Nashville takes the cake with multiple Grammy sub-genres, a local artist being nominated for an all-genre category like Best New Artist encourages the entire city to get excited. Nashville-based artists are often pushed into sub-genre categories, like country music, instead of all-around categories where they can be recognized across the board. When Nashville artists, especially country and Americana-based artists, are nominated for all-genre categories, it’s a big deal. At last year’s Grammy Awards, Nashville was represented in the Best New Artist category by Molly Tuttle and the Song of the Year category by GAYLE’s TikTok hit “abcdefu,” but both unfortunately lost.

“I wish Nashville artists got more recognition from the Grammy Awards. Although we have some of the biggest songs and albums, Nashville artists are often overlooked. That’s very disappointing, but it’s nothing new. Nashville has faced that situation for years,” former member of the Recording Academy and Dean of MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment Beverly Keel said.

“I believe the musicians and songwriters are well respected. We’re known as ‘the last songwriters town’, our musicians are second to none. We get some respect, but I do think that country music doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. A lot of times, people in LA or New York don’t really listen to country music and they still believe they’re the stereotypes, but there’s always an exciting contingent of Nashvillians that go to the Grammys.”

Whether it be for large, all-genre award categories or just being nominated in general, most locals concur that Nashville artists deserve more recognition.

“I think that Grammy viewership is sometimes limited in Nashville. I think some people love to watch the Grammys because we are the capital of the music industry, but I feel like others are

so fed up with all the music news that they tune out the Grammys,” MTSU Audio Production major and Grammy-watcher Josie Schoffstall said.

“I think it’s more important for Nashvillians to support smaller local acts rather than musicians like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. The smaller acts that are playing in bars every weekend and trying to make a name for themselves should be given a chance to have a successful music career rather than locals always pining and spending their money on the big stars. Locals need your money and support more than Taylor Swift ever will.”

While many locals agree that Nashville deserves more recognition at the Grammy Awards, recent years have shown their wish is being granted. With Nashville artists breaking into the top five all-genre categories for the past few years, they are shattering the country music stereotypes and breaking the chains that contain them to the country, folk, Americana and bluegrass categories.

Although Music City artists are challenging the boundaries set forth by the music business, it’s clear that their presence will persist at the Grammy Awards. While being nominated is enough in the eyes of Nashvillians, with a majority of local nominees favored to win, they can have their cake and eat it, too.

The 66th Annual Grammy Awards will take place on Feb. 4 in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena.

To contact Lifestyles Editor Destiny Mizell, email [email protected]. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, or follow us on Facebook at MTSU Sidelines or on X at @MTSUSidelines.