TORONTO — One of the categories to watch at Sunday’s Grammy Awards is Best New Artist, where Iggy Azalea, Bastille, Brandy Clark, Haim and Sam Smith are nominated.
Previous winners in the category include The Beatles, John Legend and Adele — but Grammy voters have raised eyebrows with some of their picks since the award was created in 1960.
The Carpenters beat Elton John in 1971, the Eagles lost to America in 1973 and, in 2008, Amy Winehouse beat Taylor Swift.
The only Canadian to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist is Robert Goulet in 1963. (He was born in the U.S. to French Canadian parents and was raised in Alberta and studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.)
A number of Canadians have been nominated, though, including Anne Murray (1971), Men Without Hats (1984), Corey Hart (1985), Glass Tiger (1987), Crash Test Dummies (1995), Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain (1996), Nelly Furtado (2002), Avril Lavigne (2003), Feist (2008) and Drake and Justin Bieber (2011).
The Best New Artist award was not given out in 1967 and was taken away from the 1990 winner, Milli Vanilli, after it was revealed Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus did not actually sing their songs.
The award is intended to honour the best new artist, not necessarily the most successful or popular.
Shelby Lynne, for example, won Best New Artist in 2001 even though she had already released six studio albums and two compilation albums.
She beat Brad Paisley, who really was a new artist. While Lynne’s career has fizzled, Paisley went on to win dozens of Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards as well three Grammys and two American Music Awards. He has sold more than 12 million albums and has had 32 singles reach the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot Country chart.
In 2004, 50 Cent lost Best New Artist to Evanescence. The latter’s last album in 2011 sold only 421,000 copies in the U.S. (compared to 7.6 million copies of their 2003 album Fallen). 50 Cent has sold more than 12 million albums since losing the Grammy.
In 2011, the Grammy for Best New Artist was presented to Esperanza Spalding, who won out over Drake, Justin Bieber, Florence + The Machine and Mumford & Sons.
Spalding’s 2012 album sold only 114,000 copies in the U.S. while Drake’s Take Care sold 2.6 million copies and Bieber’s Believe sold 1.3 million.
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