The most surprising Grammy nominations ever

That British singer Petula Clark was nominated in a rock ’n’ roll category for this pop standard would be enough to raise eyebrows. It’s even more astounding that she beat out Roy Orbison, the Beatles and the Righteous Brothers to win the Grammy. (Then again, Chet Atkins and Neil Sedaka also earned nods in the same category, but they didn’t win.)

What's so surprising about arguably the most popular band in rock 'n'roll history earning a Grammy nomination? Well, prior to 1965, no rock 'n' roll artist had cracked one of the Recording Academy's top categories (Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year). The Beatles broke through in '65 (also becoming the first rock band to be nominated for and win Best Performance by a Group), and as far as the Grammys were concerned, rock- 'n' roll was here to stay.

Not only was Antônio Carlos Jobim nearly 40 years old when he was nominated for Best New Artist, but also he’d been recording for almost a decade. He’d even been popular in the United States since 1962, when "Jazz Samba," his collaboration with Charlie Byrd, made bossa nova a global sensation.

It's not uncommon for U.S. presidents to receive nominations for the Best Spoken Word Grammy (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have all won it), but this is entirely different. These interviews, dramatized in the play and film "Frost/Nixon," culminated in the disgraced president admitting to having committed illegal acts while in office. There was talk of Nixon saving his reputation prior to these interviews. Instead, he confirmed the world's worst suspicions about his behavior. In other words, it is highly unlikely Nixon would've accepted the Grammy had he won.

Technically, this R&B band inspired by a "Saturday Night Live" skit represented John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's debut as musicians. But with a band comprised of session-musician legends like Steve "The Colonel" Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn, a Best New Artist nomination felt a tad egregious. The Recording Industry thankfully declined to nominate The Traveling Wilburys in 1990 (the same award eventually vacated by the fraudulent Milli Vanilli).

In 1983 Garry Trudeau took a year off from drawing his popular political comic strip to spearhead a Broadway musical adaptation. While the show wasn't a disaster, it received mediocre reviews, got completely shut out by the Tony Awards and closed after 104 performances. By the time "Doonesbury" received this out-of-left-field Grammy nomination, Trudeau was back to writing the strip. The show has never been revived on Broadway.

It was a beautiful thing when most of the top recording artists in the U.S. came together in January 1985 to perform "We Are the World." Their combined efforts wound up raising over $40 million to fight the brutal famine in Ethiopia. So no one batted an eye when the single won Record and Song of the Year. But the nomination for Album of the Year? For a slapped-together collection of B-sides (and Prince's original composition, "4 the Tears in Your Eyes")? It was a nice gesture but robbed deserving artists like Don Henley ("Building the Perfect Beast") and John Fogerty ("Centerfield") of recognition.

When people say Eddie Murphy saved "Saturday Night Live" in the early 1980s...they're right. But it's easy to forget that his castmate Joe Piscopo was earning huge laughs at Murphy's side. From his overexcited sportscaster to his spot-on Frank Sinatra, Piscopo seemed destined for some kind of stardom. Perhaps hoping to follow in Murphy's recording footsteps, he released a comedy album of his own titled "New Jersey." It bombed. For some reason, the Grammys saw fit to nominate one track off the LP, "Honeymooners Rap," on which Piscopo and Murphy did Jackie Gleason and Art Carney impersonations.

Grammy organizers and voters were anxious about the first hip-hop awards category — and with good reason. The nominations overlooked milestone records by EPMD, Eric B. and Rakim, Slick Rick, Public Enemy, N.W.A., Boogie Down Productions, Run-D.M.C. and Doug E. Fresh and ultimately gave the award to a lovable but lightweight novelty song. 

The Recording Academy has a tendency to lag behind the times when it comes to certain musical genres, and it outdid itself in 1989 with this brand new category. Metallica was expected to become the first heavy metal band to win a Grammy (for "... And Justice for All"), though it faced stiff competition from AC/DC, Jane's Addiction and Iggy Pop. Instead, it was the flute-driven hard rock of Jethro Tull, a well-known but hardly relevant-in-1989 outfit, who took home the trophy. The shock and outrage prompted by the win forced the Grammys to split Hard Rock and Metal into separate categories.

Quincy Jones walked into the 1990 Grammy Awards with 15 previous wins. He left the ceremony with six more trophies — one of which he should've never been nominated for. Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group was a new category for a still-nascent art form the industry hadn't quite figured out, hence the lack of nominations for seminal LPs by Ice Cube, Salt-n-Pepa and A Tribe Called Quest. "Back to the Block" featured verses by the respected likes of Big Daddy Kane, Kool Moe Dee, Ice-T and Melle Mel, but it was a novelty that didn't belong. That it beat out Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet" for the Grammy was inexcusable.

The ’Mats earned cult status with a handful of certified cult classic albums, but substance abuse, insecurity and ambivalence about the music industry prevented a breakthrough. One of the great ironies of the Replacements’ story is that the band’s final album, a Frankenstein’s monster patched together with session musicians, is the one that Grammy voters noticed.

Johnny Cash won 18 Grammys, but the big surprise is one that he didn’t win. Few of the song selections from his 1990s Rick Rubin-produced comeback albums were as memorably unlikely as his interpretation of Soundgarden’s grunge anthem “Rusty Cage.”   

It’s easy to forget that GWAR is a functioning band and not just a traveling heavy metal sci-fi Grand-Guignol performance troupe. But they earned their second Grammy nomination for the title track to the low-budget indie exploitation flick "S.F.W."  They’d been slightly more credibly nominated for Best Long Form Music Video in 1993. 

Who knew that sitting around the living room making prank calls to random people for weeks on end could result in recognition from the most prestigious body in the recording industry? Probably not The Jerky Boys (Johnny B and Kamal). But sell millions of albums (their first two LPs went platinum), and the Grammys will take note. A bit of trivia: Radiohead named its first LP, "Pablo Honey," after a Jerky Boys bit.

All due respect to Uncle L, but the self-proclaimed "Future of the Funk" had seen his best days in the recording studio by the time "Mr. Smith" dropped in late 1995. The LP had a few memorable tracks (most notably "Doin' It") but had no business being nominated over Jay Z's "Reasonable Doubt," De La Soul's "Stakes Is High" and OutKast's "ATLiens."

Kid Rock may have exploded onto the rap-rock scene in the late '90s with his LP "Devil Without a Cause," but he actually released his first hip-hop album, "Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast," in 1990. Though not aggressively marketed, the LP was produced by Oakland hip-hop legend Too $hort and managed to sell 100,000. Kid Rock put out two more albums before "Devil Without a Cause." So while Kid might've been new to the mainstream, he was old news to most rap fans.

"Genius Loves Company" was Ray Charles' final studio album (he passed away in June of 2004), so when the 2005 Grammy nominations were announced, it was expected that this all-star, Starbucks-distributed collaboration would get a little love. But Album of the Year in a competitive year like this? Critical darling Franz Ferdinand found itself out of the running, but surely Kanye West ("The College Dropout"), Green Day ("American Idiot") or Alicia Keys ("The Diary of Alicia Keys") would take home the Grammy. Nope. The late genius capped off his big evening with his eighth win.

This ludicrous celebration of yachting killed as a "Digital Video" on "Saturday Night Live" and was one of the standout tracks on The Lonely Island's debut LP, "Incredibad." Everyone loved it. But no one saw the comedy trio (assisted by autotune master T-Pain) scoring a Grammy nomination outside of the comedy category for the song. Hip-hop can be hypersensitive to anything that feels like ridicule, but "I'm on a Boat" was so banging in its own right, no one complained about the nod.

"F.A.M.E." was Chris Brown’s first No. 1 album — that’s the kind of thing that makes you a Grammy contender. But considering the state of Brown’s reputation since he was convicted of assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 — and considering that the charges against him were announced on the day of the 2009 Grammys, and Brown was forced to withdraw from a planned appearance at the awards show — the fact that he was nominated at all seems like a bad decision.  

The big surprise here isn’t that septuagenarian guitar god Jeff Beck recorded an album of songs paying tribute to electric guitar pioneer Les Paul or even that Beck got a Best Rock Album nomination for it in the 21st century. It’s that "Rock ’n’ Roll Party" was Beck’s second consecutive nomination in that category, following his 2011 nod for "Emotion and Commotion."

Here’s the official standard for the Best New Artist category: “For a new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording which establishes the public identity of that artist.” That’s been routinely stretched over the decades but maybe never as much as it was in 2012. Voters that year chose to disregard Bon Iver’s 2007 debut album, "For Emma, Forever Ago," which had been released on a major indie label and appeared on best-of lists from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, NME, Mojo and Spin, among other publications.

One of the all-time Grammy stunners. It's hard to believe these two hugely popular and influential LPs were denied Album of the Year nominations in 2012, but it's also easy to make a case for most of the competition that made the final cut. In hindsight, Bruno Mars' "Doo-Wops & Hooligans" and Rihanna's "Loud" should've been on the outside looking in.

The members of this underground jazz/soul combo from Australia found themselves in heady company when this track from their debut album unexpectedly earned a Grammy nod — they faced off against big-league competition The Weeknd, Tamar Braxton, Anthony Hamilton and Miguel and Kendrick Lamar. Even more surprising, the still largely unknown HK earned another nomination in the same category two years later. 

Grammy voters committed the worst crime against Jamaican music since 2007, when Matisyahu was nominated in this category, by acknowledging this misbegotten exercise in cultural tourism, fronted by Snoop Dogg and produced by Diplo and his associates. Just because an American releases a reggae album doesn’t mean it’s any good.  

2014 was a highly competitive year in a number of categories, so it was a surprise to see Bareilles' modestly successful "The Blessed Unrest" land an Album of the Year nomination over the hugely popular duo of Justin Timberlake ("The 20/20 Experience") and Bruno Mars ("Unorthodox Jukebox").

Even now Grammy voters can be a little conservative when it comes to tawdry lyrics, particularly in the top categories. So Grammy experts were pleasantly surprised when Meghan Trainor's effusive ode to ample booties snagged nominations for Record and Song of the Year. At long last, the Recording Academy joined the club: They like big butts, and they cannot lie.

Never heard of Vocally Challenged? Well, don't attempt to Wiki them: They don't even have an entry. (At the time of their Grammy nod, they didn't even have a social media presence or an official website). Granted, few people pay attention to this category, but longtime Grammy observers were caught off guard by this nomination for the heretofore unknown group's medley of Bruno Mars songs. If you're a fan, maybe do them a solid and give them a Wikipedia page.

Give Highly Suspect credit: They, unlike fellow 2016 nominee Vocally Challenged, have a Wikipedia page. Still, the rock trio out of Cape Cod was relatively unknown when it scored two Grammy nominations for its debut LP, "Mister Asylum." Grouped with established acts like Muse, Slipknot and Death Cab for Cutie, this surprising Grammy showing put Highly Suspect on the map. 

In these days of overproduced, same-sounding country music, it's refreshing — and, according to Grammy observers, somewhat shocking — to see a throwback artist like Sturgill Simpson vie for Best Country Album. Simpson's drawn comparisons to legends like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins, but he's not afraid to go his own way. "A Sailor's Guide to Earth" features contributions from the funk/soul collective The Dap-Kings and a cover of Nirvana's "In Bloom."

You may not recognize him without the cascading hair-metal locks, but rest assured that is former rock god Kip Winger. Before he began fronting his band Winger in the late 1980s, Kip studied classical music in his hometown of Denver and, later, New York City. He still records with the band, but at age 55 he's branched out into ballet-inspired classical compositions and just earned his first-ever Grammy nomination for his efforts.

Maybe it’s not surprising that Donald Glover’s hip-hop persona faced off against Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Lorde, Bruno Mars and “Despacito” at the 2018 Grammys. He’s been nominated twice before. But it was surprising that he was nominated for five awards, including in two major categories (Album and Record of the Year). Had he ended up being the star of the night, it would have been one of the unlikeliest Grammy sweeps in recent memory.

The Grammys love Taylor Swift. She has two Album of the Year wins, after all. However, her album "Reputation" was apparently not up to her usual standards, at least according to the voters. After getting mixed reviews, "Reputation" was snubbed by the "Big Four" categories (Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Artist of the Year).

We aren't knocking the skills of Gabriella Wilson, who records as H.E.R. The 22-year-old R&B artist certainly is brimming with potential. The surprise is how quickly that surprise turned into genuine Grammys love. She, or rather H.E.R., got a nomination for Album of the Year for her self-titled release.

We figured Lil Nas X might get some Grammy love for "Old Town Road," the biggest hit song of 2019. However, seeing the rapper also get a nomination for Album of the Year for "7" was a bit of a shocker. His album is an 18-minute long EP that features TWO versions of "Old Town Road." Then again, in modern times, when the album is a dying art form, maybe this is a glimpse of the future.

This is a pleasant surprise. Big Thief is a really good band, and its album "U.F.O.F." is an impressive work. It also would have been understandable if Big Thief was under the radar of the Grammy committee. Instead, the group got a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album alongside big names like Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver and Thom Yorke.

Tucker is a country legend, but the 61-year-old was last nominated for a Grammy back in 1994. It seemed like her time in the sun was over. Not so far. Tucker is getting love once again, and not just in the country categories. "Bring My Flowers Now" is actually up for Song of the Year.