Best New Artist Nominees:
- Meghan Trainor
- James Bay
- Tori Kelly
- Sam Hunt
- Courtney Barnett
Who Should Win: Meghan Trainor
I’ve been a Meghan Trainor fan for a couple different reasons. Yes, she comes from my neck of the woods so I feel a certain kinship to her, but I’m really inspired how she combines elements from different genres into her own to transpire her personality. She is the only artist this year who really expanded the definition of the all encompassing pop music. I mean, she added horns, the caribbean kettle drum, acoustic bass, ’50s doo wop, and sass to her album to reimage what we’ve called pop for many years.
I can’t say that Trainor’s album or artistry is the supreme best, but out of all the nominees I feel she rose to a level of defining her genre of music in her own terms.
Who Will Win: I don’t really know.
I know, great prediction. But this is one category where I seriously have no idea who will win. Partly because Best New Artist is such a loose category in that your not really judging the artist on one particular song or album or piece of work, your judging them on their whole artistry. This year, they managed to nominated five incredible artists. And after listening to all their albums (I’m very proud of myself for doing that…usually I skim through, but I made myself do that…partly out of dedication but also because I was stuck in massive traffic and had nothing else to do…) I could see each one easily winning it.
