Grammy Award for Song of the Year | |
---|---|
Awarded for | Quality song containing both lyrics and melody |
Country | United States |
Presented by | National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences |
First awarded | 1959 |
Currently held by | Donald Glover, Ludwig Göransson & Jeffery Lamar Williams, "This is America" (2019) |
Website | grammy.com |
The Grammy Award for Song of the Year is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards.[1] The Song of the Year award is one of the four most prestigious categories at the awards (alongside Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Album of the Year) presented annually since the 1st Grammy Awards in 1959. According to the 54th Grammy Awards description guide, the award is presented:
to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.[2]
Song of the Year is related to but is conceptually different from Record of the Year or Album of the Year:
The Song of the Year awards have been awarded since 1959.[3] It is one of the four most prestigious Grammy Awards. Despite both the Record of the Year award and Song of the Year being awarded for a single or for one track from an album, this award goes only to the composer(s) of the song whereas the Record of the Year award goes to the performer and production team of the song. According to the 54th Grammy Awards description guide, the award is given to the songwriter(s) of a song that "must contain melody and lyrics and must be either a new song or a song first achieving prominence during the eligibility year. Songs containing prominent samples or interpolations are not eligible".[4]
Since the late 1960s other songwriter's awards have been presented for genre-specific categories including Grammy Award for Best Country Song (since 1965), Grammy Award for Best R&B Song (since 1969), Grammy Award for Best Rock Song (since 1992) and most recently in Grammy Award for Best Rap Song (since 2004), Grammy Award for Best Gospel Song (since 2006), Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song (since 2012) and Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song (since 2014).
Thirty-one of the winning songs have also won the award for Record of the Year.
The category will expand to include eight nominees in 2019.[5]
In many cases, the songwriters were also the performers. (Domenico Modugno, Henry Mancini, John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Joe South, Paul Simon, Carole King, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel, Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Sting, Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie, Bobby McFerrin, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Seal, Shawn Colvin, James Horner, Rob Thomas, U2, Alicia Keys, Luther Vandross, John Mayer, Dixie Chicks, Amy Winehouse, Coldplay, Beyoncé, Lady Antebellum, Adele, Fun, Lorde, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, and Childish Gambino).
Multiple winners in this category include Henry Mancini (1962 and 1964), Johnny Mercer (1962 and 1964), James Horner (1988 and 1999), Will Jennings (1993 and 1999), U2 (2001 and 2006), and Adele (2012 and 2017), winning two times each. However, songs written for Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, and Roberta Flack have received this award twice.
Christopher Cross is the first artist to receive the Grammy Award for Song of the Year as well as for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist in one ceremony. Adele is the first female artist to receive the award for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best New Artist, and Album of the Year, nonconsecutively. Only five artists have won the Song of the Year and Best New Artist awards the same year: Christopher Cross (1981), Alicia Keys (2002), Amy Winehouse (2008), Fun (2013), and Sam Smith (2015); Marvin Hamlisch is only composer to win the Song of the Year and Best New Artist awards the same year in 1975.
The song "Volare", winner in 1959 by Domenico Modugno and performed in Italian, is the only foreign-language song to win this award, although the 1967 winner "Michelle" by the Beatles has a critical part of its lyrics in French.
As of 2019, no songwriter has won Song of the Year twice in a row.
Members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences nominate their choices for song of the year. A list of the top twenty records is given to the Nominations Review Committee, a specially selected group of anonymous members, who then select the top five records to gain a nomination in the category in a special ballot.[6] The rest of the members then vote a winner from the five nominees.[7] In 2018, it was announced the number of nominated tracks will be increased to eight [8]
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