Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X will perform at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards on April 3, the Recording Academy announced on Tuesday.
Along with singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile and country duo Brothers Osborne, they are the first batch of artists announced for the show, which was postponed for nine weeks due to the pandemic and is being held in Las Vegas for the first time. Trevor Noah from “The Daily Show” is the host.
The show, at the MGM Grand Arena, is broadcast by CBS and can be streamed on Paramount+.
Rodrigo and Eilish will each experience seven awards and will compete for record, album and song of the year. Rodrigo, whose debut album ‘Sour’ was one of the biggest hits of last year, has also been nominated for Best New Artist, raising the possibility that she could win the top four awards – for the first time since Eilish did in 2020.
Lil Nas X, the singer and rapper who rose to fame three years ago with the meme-ready “Old Town Road,” has been nominated for five awards, including album of the year. Carlile was nominated in four categories, including twice for song of the year (for “Right on Time” and “A Beautiful Noise”). Brothers Osborne have two kinks, and BTS one. Jon Batiste, the bandleader of ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’, has the most nominations, at 11.
Other top nominees include Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and HER The Recording Academy, which hosts the Grammys, sparked controversy last year when it was revealed it had made a last-minute change, unknown to voters, expanding the vote count from eight to ten nominees. for the four top categories. Among the beneficiaries of that change were Taylor Swift and Kanye West.
This year’s show is the second to be delayed by the pandemic, and while last year’s production was well received by critics as a fresh new take on the format, the rating dropped to a low of 8.8 million, a drop of 53 percent compared to the previous year. In 2012, when the Grammys were held the day after Whitney Houston’s death, the show drew nearly 40 million viewers.