NEW YORK (news agencies) — When is something old considered new? If you’re talking about the Grammy Awards, that’s often whoever lands in the best new artist category, easily the weirdest of the races.
Take Sabrina Carpenter, who finds herself nominated for best new artist this year — on her sixth full-length release. There’s little doubt that the “Espresso” singer ruled the airwaves in 2024, but she was already making a mark on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as early as 2021 with the No. 48 song “Skin.”
The category of new artist is constantly evolving, trying to capture the zeitgeist each year as the process of categorizing fame gets more complicated, from raw LP sales in the 1970s to TikTok videos today.
“I do think that they are constantly tweaking that category to make a bigger splash with it,” said Theo Cateforis, director of undergraduate studies in music history at Syracuse University. “They are kind of gaming the system to say, ‘Yes, we want artists nominated for this category who will draw eyeballs, who will have an audience, who will make for a better kind of media representation.’”
The Grammy rules currently say nominations hinge on whether “the artist had attained a breakthrough or prominence” — and it delegates that determination to a screening committee. Eligible artists must have released at least five singles or one album, but there is no longer a maximum.
Under those rules, Carpenter fits. She had three top 10 hits in 2024 — “Espresso,” “Please Please Please” and “Taste” — and her album “Short n’ Sweet” spent four weeks at No. 1. Suddenly she was very prominent.
“I’ve got to confess, even as a pop music scholar, I wasn’t talking about Sabrina Carpenter’s fifth album, but I was talking about her sixth album,” said Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
The Grammys have long stretched the meaning of “new” into a pretzel. Cyndi Lauper won best new artist in 1984 despite having released an album with the band Blue Angel four years before. Green Day were nominated after “Dookie,” but that was the trio’s third album.
Bennett recalls teaching a songwriting class that featured Amy Winehouse’s first album “Frank” in 2003 — a full five years before she would win the crown for best new artist. Bon Iver won on their second album and Esperanza Spalding won after her third. Chance the Rapper walked up to accept the Grammy for best new artist in 2017 with a baseball cap that had a “3” stitched on it — the number of albums he’d created by then.
That loosey-goosey nature is in stark contrast to the strict past, when Whitney Houston famously wasn’t deemed eligible for best new artist in 1986 because she had already recorded duets with other artists.
Some best new artist candidates are really fresh, but that’s rare. Lil Nas X is one example — his major label debut EP contained “Old Town Road” in 2019 and a year later he was at the Grammys. Or Olivia Rodrigo, whose debut “Sour” came out in 2021 and helped her be crowned best new artist in 2022.
“I think a large part of the issue is that it’s just a poorly named category,” said Jasmine Henry, a musicologist and sound engineer who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. “I think the way the public conceives of this category is as best debut artist award. And the reality is that it’s really a breakout award in its function.”
The rules for best new artist last came under a harsh spotlight in 2009 when Lady Gaga was barred from the category because her first single, “Just Dance,” had been nominated for best dance recording the year before.
The rules back then said best new artist nominees couldn’t appear on any Grammy-nominated recording, even if they were a feature. Under the 2010 revised rules, artists were eligible for the best new artist prize unless they had previously released an album or already won a Grammy.
In 2016, the Recording Academy updated its eligibility requirements again, “to remove the album barrier given current trends in how new music and developing artists are released and promoted.” In 2019, it expanded the number of nominations to include eight artists instead of five. In 2021, it removed the maximum amount of musical output — 30 singles or tracks or three albums.
“Best new artist is now viewed — and rightly, in my opinion — through the eyes of public opinion, not through some strictly applied set of grubby numerical criteria,” said Bennett.
The current rules also allow best new artist nominees who were formerly in a duo or groups, ”provided the duo/group had not attained prominence.”
That means three past winners for best new artist — 1970’s Crosby, Stills & Nash, 1988’s Jody Watley and 1999’s Lauryn Hill — likely wouldn’t be eligible. David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were all already known for their work in previous groups, as were Watley (in Shalamar) and Hill (the Fugees).
These days, there’s a certain career momentum that best new artist nominees share, said Henry. It’s a mix of red-hot singles and virality.
“We usually see the breakout song and then we’ll see them do a Tiny Desk Concert, and then they may open up for Taylor Swift and have a viral moment. And then they’re probably going to be on ‘Saturday Night Live’ or late night,” she said. “You can really see that trajectory crystallizing over the last decade.”
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