Music

10 Fun Facts about the Grammys

The 59th Grammy Awards aired on Sunday the 12 of February. The show saw host, James Corden, rap his opening monologue, people got political and Adele swept the awards. She nabbed the most coveted, Album of the Year, over Beyonce’s Lemonade, with Adele herself ‘pulling a Kanye’ and declared Beyonce should have won.  Allegedly, breaking her Grammy in half to share with her.

So with all this excitement, we got to thinking about some fun Grammy facts, that we hope you find just as interesting as we do.

  1. Despite losing out to Adele for best album, Beyonce can still claim the most nominations for a female artist, with a grand total of 62 nominations.
  2. There was a contest to choose a name for the award show, the winner received 25 LP’s as a thank you.
  3. There’s an award for Best Spoken Word album, which includes audio books. So it’s not only musicians with Grammy awards sitting on their mantelpiece, recipients include Maya Angelo, Betty White, and Barack Obama has two!
  4. Back in 1990 the academy revoked Milli Valilli’s grammy for best new Artist, after it was revealed that the duo never sang a single word on their album, and just lip synced their live performance.
  5. Best Rap performance was first awarded in 1989 with DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince (Will Smith) winning for Parents Just Don’t Understand.
    DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Parents Just Don't Understand
  6. Over 20,000 people vote for the winners of each award, the academy being made up of musicians and industry professionals.
  7. Our very own Sinead O’Connor is the only person to ever refuse a Grammy. Back in 1990 she refused to turn up to the ceremony or accept the award for Best Alternative Music Performance for her song “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”. She claimed it stemmed from the award shows extreme commercialization.
  8. LeAnn Rymes was the youngest person to ever receive a Grammy at the age of 14.
  9. In an unlikely pairing, Eminem and Elton John teamed up back in 2001 to perform Eminem’s Stan, with Elton John Performing Dido’s parts.
    http://youtu.be/lkaYRL-8Iwk
  10. At the ceremony in 2000 J.Lo wore such a revealing dress that it became the most searched query on Google. From this Google image search was born, so they could better provide answers to its users.