Bruno Mars, Jay-Z & Kendrick Lamar Lead the 2018 GRAMMY Nominations!

“Lucky for you that’s what I like, that’s what I like, lucky you for you that’s what I like, that;s what I like!”

I imagine that when Bruno Mars woke up this morning and saw this year’s GRAMMY nominations, those lyrics to his now GRAMMY nominated song came to mind.

via GIPHY

At the 2016 GRAMMYs, Bruno’s funky hit record with Mark Ronson, ‘Uptown Funk’ won the award for Record of the Year and he’ll look to achieve similar success at this year’s show as his groovy album, ’24K Magic’ is up for Album of the Year – the album’s title track is also up for Record of the Year, while the song we referenced above, ‘That’s What I Like’ is up for Song of the Year. 

One of the more hotly-contested categories is the Best Pop Solo Performance category, which features nominees who have won a combined 15 GRAMMYs between them.

“Love So Soft” — Kelly Clarkson
“Praying” — Kesha
“Million Reasons” — Lady Gaga
“What About Us” — Pink
“Shape of You” — Ed Sheeran

Best Alternative Music Album (Vocal or Instrumental)

“Everything Now” — Arcade Fire

“Humanz” — Gorillaz

“American Dream” — LCD Soundsystem

“Pure Comedy” — Father John Misty

“Sleep Well Beast” — The National

Best Rock Performance (For new vocal or instrumental solo, duo/group or collaborative rock recordings)

“You Want It Darker” — Leonard Cohen Track from: You Want It Darker

“The Promise” — Chris Cornell

“Run” — Foo Fighters Track from: Concrete And Gold

“No Good” — Kaleo Track from: A/B

“Go To War” — Nothing More

Best Rock Song (A Songwriter(s) Award. Includes Rock, Hard Rock and Metal songs. A song is eligible if it was first released or if it first achieved prominence during the Eligibility Year. (Artist names appear in parentheses.) Singles or Tracks only.)

“Atlas, Rise!” — James Hetfield & Lars Ulrich, songwriters (Metallica) Track from: Hardwired…To Self-Destruct

“Blood In The Cut” — JT Daly & Kristine Flaherty, songwriters (K.Flay) Track from: Every Where Is Some Where

“Go To War” — Ben Anderson, Jonny Hawkins, Will Hoffman, Daniel Oliver, David Pramik & Mark Vollelunga, songwriters (Nothing More)

“Run” — Foo Fighters, songwriters (Foo Fighters) Track from: Concrete And Gold

“The Stage” — Zachary Baker, Brian Haner, Matthew Sanders, Jonathan Seward & Brooks Wackerman, songwriters (Avenged Sevenfold) Track from: The Stage

Best Rock Album (For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new rock, hard rock or metal recordings.)

“Emperor Of Sand” — Mastodon

“Hardwired…To Self-Destruct” — Metallica

“The Stories We Tell Ourselves” — Nothing More

“Villains” — Queens Of The Stone Age

“A Deeper Understanding” — The War On Drugs

Old school versus New School was one of the first things that jumped out to me when you look at this year’s GRAMMY nominations as rapper Jay-Z leads the way with eight nominations, while fellow Hip-Hop star Kendrick Lamar is close behind with seven.

Jay-Z picked up nominations in some of the top categories this year including, Record of the Year (‘The Story of O.J.’), Song of the Year (‘4:44’) and Album of the Year (‘4:44’).

Kendrick also picked up nominations for Album of the Year (‘Damn’) and ‘Humble’ was nominated for Record of the Year;  Childish Gambino (the music alter-go of Donald Glover) also picked up five.

One of the biggest songs of the year, Luis Fonsi’s ‘Despacito’ was definitely recognized for its massive 2017 as it picked up nominations in both the Song & Record of the Year categories, making it the first non-English language track to be nominated in both categories.

Special shout out to Brampton, Ontario’s Alessia Cara who picked up a few GRAMMY nominations herself including, Best New Artist where she’ll be in tough against Khalid, Lil Uzi Vert, Julia Michaels and SZA.

For the full list of nominees, click HERE.

The 60^th Annual GRAMMY Awards^® are live from Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday, Jan. 28 at 7:30pm ET / 8pm PT on City.