Nashville music-makers are always well represented among Grammy award nominees in particular categories — country, contemporary Christian and Americana chief among them. But they’re making a strong showing in the newly announced 2023 Grammy nods across a wide array of fields.
Molly Tuttle, a singer-songwriter and flatpicking virtuoso who rose through the bluegrass ranks — becoming the first woman named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2017 — is up for Best New Artist. That’s a category that spans all genres.
After expanding the boundaries of her songs into atmospheric acoustic territory, she returned to making vital, contemporary bluegrass with her band Golden Highway on this year’s Crooked Tree. Her fellow nominees include rising R&B artist Muni Long, the performing moniker of Priscilla Renea, who’s also released tremendously savvy but overlooked country material through Nashville-based Thirty Tigers.
Tennessee State University’s Aristocrat of Bands already made history this year by releasing a studio album, The Urban Hymnal, that showcases the decorated HBCU marching band playing gospel material. That project features historically grounded songwriting and contemporary production from Sir the Baptist, dynamic arrangements by assistant band director Larry Jenkins and vocals from a host of gospel stars. It was the first of its kind, and it’s now nominated for Best Roots Gospel Album.
Jessy Wilson also received a notable nod. She’s gained notice as a backup singer, songwriter and recording artist in an array of styles since the mid-2000s. After a series of personal and professional setbacks in recent years, she nearly gave up on music, until her anthem “Keep Rising” was selected for the film The Woman King. It’s now in the running for Best Song Written for Visual Media. (Wilson happens to be WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month for November).
The Grammy’s also debuted several new categories, including Songwriter of the Year, which recognizes composers who don’t record their own material. That’s highly relevant to Nashville’s professional songwriting community, whose own Laura Veltz received a nomination, after helping shape songs with and for Maren Morris, Ingrid Andress and Demi Lovato.
The fingerprints of Nashville artists can be detected in slightly more unexpected places, too. Spoken word specialists Rashad the Poet and S-Wrap teamed up last year not only for a collaborative album, but also to help advocate for their art form’s place at the Grammy’s. For years, poetry albums shared a category with audio books, and perpetually took a backseat to celebrity-narrated memoirs. That’s now changed with the debut of the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category.
Tune in to This is Nashville at noon on Wednesday to hear Jewly Hight discuss the latest round of nominations.
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