[GRAMMYS PREDICTION] Who Will 2019's Dance Categories?

Music's biggest night is back again. The 61st Grammys are this Sunday, February 10th back in Los Angeles, and we are counting down to another night of once in a lifetime moving performances from our favorite artists. 

Alicia Keys will be hosting this year's event, deservingly enough as she is a 15 time Grammy winner herself. 

Lady Gaga will be performing for the 5th year in a row and fingers crossed she brings out Bradley Cooper to singalong their duo track "Shallow" that has multiple nominations including Song Of The Year. 

There Are Only 2 Categories For Dance Music 

The Grammys didn't start recognizing the EDM spectrum until more recent years. Some Academy members were reluctant to give dance music its own category because they were not sure that it was a genre that would stick around. Little did they know, Marshmello would go on to have millions attend a virtual rave inside Fortnite and top paid DJ Calvin Harris would be racking in over $48 million a year. 

In 1998, they finally began awarding Best Dance Recording, which has seen winners like Madonna, Britney Spears, Zedd, The Chainsmokers, Jack U and most recently LCD Soundsystem.  

Finally in 2005 they began recognizing the Best Dance/Electronic Album. Here we are 13 years later having seen winners like Daft Punk, Skrillex, Jack U, Flume and most recently Kraftwerk. 

To be defined as dance music, albums must contain at least 51% playing time of new vocal or instrumental electronic recordings. 

Best Dance Recording

For solo, duo, group or collaborative performances. Vocal or Instrumental. Singles or tracks only.

• NORTHERN SOUL
  Above & Beyond Featuring Richard Bedford
  Above & Beyond & Andrew Bayer, producers; Above & Beyond, mixers
   
• ULTIMATUM
  Disclosure (Featuring Fatoumata Diawara)
  Guy Lawrence & Howard Lawrence, producers; Guy Lawrence, mixer
   
• LOSING IT
  Fisher
  Paul Nicholas Fisher, producer; Kevin Grainger, mixer
   
• ELECTRICITY
  Silk City & Dua Lipa Featuring Diplo & Mark Ronson
  Jarami, Alex Metric, Riton & Silk City, producers; Josh Gudwin, mixer
   
• GHOST VOICES
  Virtual Self
  Porter Robinson, producer; Porter Robinson, mixer

This is Disclosure's 4th nomination, the first being back in 2014 for their album Settle, 2015 for "F For You" with Mary J Blige and then in 2016 for Caracal. Unfortunately, they have not won any category so maybe this will be their year. 

In 2016, Diplo won both best dance album and recording categories with Skrillex as Jack U. This year his collab with Silk City & Dua Lipa could take the prize, as this beautiful vocal track was a hit song on the radio. 

It's also no surprise to see Above & Beyond and Porter Robinson's Virtual Self on this nominations list.

This was a hard one, but I have to go with Fisher's "Losing It" because it was hands down the most played track in every electronic set that I heard in 2018, and still is being played, remixed and danced to by everyone. 

Best Dance / Electronic Album 

For vocal or instrumental albums. Albums only.

• SINGULARITY
  Jon Hopkins
   
• WOMAN WORLDWIDE
  Justice
   
• TREEHOUSE
  Sofi Tukker
   
• OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES
  SOPHIE
   
• LUNE ROUGE
  TOKiMONSTA

Considering that EDM is a known male dominated genre, it is awesome to see s many ladies on this nomination list - SOPHIE, TOKiMONSTA and Sofi Tukker (which is just 1/2 a lady, but it counts). 

Personally, none of these albums listed are the actual "best dance album of 2018." (You can read that list HERE.) If I had to choose one though, I would choose the duo Sofi Tukker.

With over 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Sofi Tukker probably deserves to win this one. Jon Hopkins and Justice both have over a million, SOPHIE is barely st 300k, and TOKiMONSTA is just under 1 million. 

Sofi Tukker was nominated back in 2016 for her track "Drinkee" but lost to The Chainsmokers. To put these stats into perspective Martin Garrix has over 24 million monthly listeners and Marshmello has over 40 million. We aren't sure where these nominations came from. 

Other Notable Dance Nominees 

Some other notable dance nominations are Zedd's "The Middle" for Record Of The Year AND for Song Of The Year. We are rooting for you, Zedd, but being up against Drake, Childish Gambino and the unstoppable Lady Gaga is hard. 

And lastly, vocalist Dua Lipa is also up for Best New Artist (as well as Best Dance Recording with Diplo). I predicted this nomination much earlier in the year because Dua Lipa is a bad ass who popped up with multiple hits in 2018 featuring her beautiful voice. 

The 61st annual Grammys air on Sunday, Feb 10th. Tune in and see who will take home the most recognized award in the music industry. 

You can read the full list of Grammy Nominations for every category HERE. 

Stay up to date with more EDM News HERE.