Grammy Snubs and Surprises: Silk Sonic and Jon Batiste Go Big; Lil Nas X, Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish Shut Out

variety.com:

Chris Willman Music WriterThe Grammys, unlike the usually more-or-less accurately forecasted Oscars, are always full of surprises, this year hardly being any exception.

Jon Batiste receiving a leading five wins? Who saw that coming — except for anyone who saw him coming in with a leading 11 nominations and figured the math might translate?But that arithmetic did not carry over for the highly nominated Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X, who went home empty-handed (but still full-hearted, let’s hope), or produce the results quite expected for Olivia Rodrigo and the Tony Bennett/Lady Gaga teaming.Meanwhile, during the pre-telecast Premiere Ceremony presentation, live-streamed on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel, there were other kind of surprises including some seemingly honest confusion about given names and gender involving best new artist nominee and pre-telecast presenter Arlo Parks and veteran bluegrass picker (and pre-telecast winner) Bela Fleck.

After all, the Grammys are one very, very long day for all involved. Here’s a rundown of this year’s biggest snubs and surprises:SURPRISE: Silk Sonic sweepsThe duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson.

Paak had the only perfect record of the night, at least among nominees with a significant number of turns at bat. “We are really trying our hardest to remain humble at this point,” said .Paak, “but in the industry we call that a clean sweep.”They won in all four categories in which they were nominated: record of the year, song of the year, best R&B song and best R&B performance.