66th Annual Grammy Awards

• 1. Introduction

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  The 66th Annual Grammy Awards took place on the 4th of February 2024, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, the venue's 21st year hosting the show. Trevor Noah hosted the broadcast on CBS for the fourth time. The Recording Academy had already rewritten the eligibility rules months earlier on a question music was just beginning to confront. Could a song made partly by artificial intelligence win a Grammy? Inside the ceremony, records fell across multiple categories. What does it mean for one album to win the industry's top prize four separate times? And on a night when one artist arrived with the most nominations of anyone, why did the evening's biggest winner carry a different name?

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• 2. The Night's Biggest Winner

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  SZA entered the ceremony with nine nominations, the most of any artist in the field. By the close of the evening she had collected three awards. The night's most decorated artist was not the most-nominated one. Phoebe Bridgers, who had tied for the second-highest nominations with seven, walked away with four.

  Three of those four awards came as part of the trio Boygenius. Together with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, Bridgers won Best Rock Song, Best Rock Performance, and Best Alternative Music Album for The Record. Her fourth trophy came individually, as a co-winner with SZA for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

  Victoria Monét, who had also entered with seven nominations, matched SZA with three wins. Best New Artist was among them. Killer Mike collected three awards as well. Engineer Serban Ghenea shared the seven-nomination tier with Bridgers and Monét. He extended his own career record with a fifth win in his category that night.

  Among the presenters for the ceremony's final award was Celine Dion, who had been named to present Album of the Year.

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• 3. Taylor Swift's Fourth

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  Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift produced Midnights together. When U2 presented Best Pop Vocal Album, Swift accepted it. While at the podium she announced her next release: The Tortured Poets Department.

  Celine Dion came out to present Album of the Year. The trophy went to Midnights, making Swift the first singer ever to win that award four times. She beat seven competitors, including albums by Jon Batiste, Boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Lana Del Rey, Janelle Monae, Olivia Rodrigo, and SZA.

  Miley Cyrus had taken Record of the Year earlier in the ceremony for "Flowers." Meryl Streep and Mark Ronson presented that award. Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell won Song of the Year for "What Was I Made For?," written for the Barbie film. Lionel Richie presented Song of the Year.

  The four General Field prizes had been settled. The eligibility rules that governed who could compete in each of them had been formally rewritten months before the ceremony.

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• 4. The AI Boundary

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  On the 16th of June 2023, the Recording Academy issued a formal declaration on artificial intelligence. The statement read: "only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration for, nominated for, or win a Grammy Award." Works with no human authorship were ruled ineligible in every category.

  When a song called "Heart on My Sleeve," submitted under the name ghostwriter977, came up for Grammy consideration, the new policy was applied to it directly. The track had used artificial intelligence voice cloning to reproduce the vocals of Drake and The Weeknd. Although a human wrote the song, the Recording Academy ruled it ineligible on three grounds. Its vocals had been produced using artificial intelligence voice cloning. The use of those vocals lacked clearance from either artist's record label. And the song was not commercially available.

  Watsonx, a generative AI tool developed by IBM, was used during the broadcast to generate editorial content around the nominees. Contributors whose involvement on a project consisted entirely of material created by artificial intelligence were not eligible for an award. A human's meaningful contribution was required for any work containing such material.

  The AI policy was one of several formal changes the academy had announced for the 66th ceremony. Others reshaped the award categories themselves.

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• 5. A Restructured Academy

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  Ninety-four categories appeared on the Grammy ballot at the 66th ceremony. Three of them were new.

  The Grammy ballot had been cut from 26 fields to 11, not counting the General Field. The Recording Academy stated the change was designed to let all voting members exercise their ten allotted votes. Under the prior structure, some fields had contained only a single category, which prevented voters from using all of their allotted votes. Voters were encouraged to cast up to ten genre-category votes spread across no more than three fields.

  Best African Music Performance, Best Alternative Jazz Album, and Best Pop Dance Recording each appeared for the first time. Two existing categories were also renamed: Best Regional Mexican Music Album (including Tejano) became Best Musica Mexicana Album (including Tejano), and Best Improvised Jazz Solo was retitled Best Jazz Solo Performance.

  Two non-Classical prizes moved into the General Field for this ceremony: Producer of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. The full Grammy voting membership could now weigh in on both. A new minimum was also set for Album of the Year credits. Credited contributors, from lead artists to mastering engineers, had to account for at least 20 percent of an album's playing time to qualify for nomination.

  The requirement that Best Music Film submissions include at least 51 percent performance-based material had also been dropped.

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• 6. The Stage and the Firsts

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  South African singer Tyla won Best African Music Performance for "Water." Paramore's album This Is Why took Best Rock Album. The band became the first female-fronted rock group to claim that category.

  Joni Mitchell's debut performance at the Grammy ceremony came at the 66th Awards. Brandi Carlile introduced her. Mitchell performed "Both Sides, Now" alongside Carlile, Jacob Collier, Blake Mills, Lucius, Allison Russell, and SistaStrings. Billy Joel returned to the Grammy stage after 22 years away. He performed "Turn the Lights Back On" and "You May Be Right" alongside Laufey.

  Tracy Chapman joined Luke Combs on the Grammy stage for "Fast Car." Combs had covered the song, which was nominated for Best Country Solo Performance. U2 performed "Atomic City" live from their U2:UV residency at the Sphere in Paradise, Nevada. Oprah Winfrey introduced Fantasia for the In Memoriam segment, which included a performance of "Proud Mary" in tribute to Tina Turner.

  Victoria Monet's daughter Hazel was two years old, a featured artist on the song "Hollywood," and the youngest nominee in Grammy Awards history. Her nomination arrived in the same year the Recording Academy formally declared that only human creators were eligible to win.

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