Fab Five battle for the 2016 Album of the Year
Five in a million.
The 2016 Grammy Awards feature an impressive collection of talent competing for the Album of the Year award. With so many different sounds up for the award presented on Feb. 15, here is a complete breakdown of each nominee to help you decide who gets your vote.
Sound and Color
By Alabama Shakes
As one of the only blues-rock bands on the mainstream music scene, the Alabama Shakes seemed to have struck gold with their 2012 debut album Boys and Girls, however, on Sound and Color, the band showed that they had only scratched the surface of their musical excellence.
To Pimp a Butterfly
By Kendrick Lamar
In his album To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar perfectly walks the line between funk, soul, and hip-hop styles, bringing new sounds and meanings with every song. Lamar was able to remain consistent in his meaningful lyricism and social criticisms, perfecting the long lost art of storytelling hip-hop.
Beauty Behind the Madness
By The Weeknd
Underneath The Weeknd’s smooth, soulful vocals, hard electronic, hip-hop beats mix with strings, horns and keys to form the pop-R&B sound of Beauty Behind the Madness. The Weeknd gives off an air of fearlessness, showing his refusal to conform to the sound of other artists in his genre, and in doing this, nearly creates a genre of his own.
1989
By Taylor Swift
T-Swift has received a whopping 29 Grammy nominations since her career took off–but last year she captured on her fifth studio album. With 80s synth-pop beats and fast, powerful vocals, 1989 easily distances itself from any of Swift’s past projects, featuring no country vocals, and nearly no usage of an acoustic guitar, the two sounds that jumpstarted her career.
Traveller
By Chris Stapleton
Traveller is an album of heartbreak; after the death of his father in 2013, Chris Stapleton set out to create an album in his honor, and succeeded. The slow, guitar driven melody of many songs on the album perfectly captures a feeling of sadness and reflection, giving the listener insight on Stapleton’s difficulties in getting through this tragedy.
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