Beyoncé vs. Adele vs. Harry — our Grammy winner predictions, plus host Trevor Noah previews the awards
Will the 2023 Grammys be a repeat of the 2017 ceremony, where Adele's 25 beat out Beyoncé's Formation for Album of the Year?
That is a big topic of discussion on the latest episode of the Awardist podcast, where EW critic Leah Greenblatt and senior editor Jason Lamphier join host Gerrad Hall to give their predictions in the major categories. The Album of the Year field is a wildly competitive one, with Harry Styles, Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, Brandi Carlile, Lizzo, and more landing nominations alongside Adele for 30 and Beyoncé for Renaissance.
"I'm a little worried that it will be the death of the Grammys if she doesn't win," Greenblatt says of Beyoncé, who's been nominated for the top award three times previously, losing to Taylor Swift, Beck, and Adele. Adds Lamphier: "It just would feel like the biggest miss — not in Grammys history, but it would be a very, very big miss on their part."
While they're in agreement on who should win that category, Best New Artist is a different situation — more so because there's a solid argument for a handful of the 10 nominees, including Anitta, Latto, Omar Apollo, and Måneskin.
"I would be interested to see if Omar Apollo can somehow pull it off because he's very much like a Coachella kid, he's queer, he's Mexican American, and he has a lane that feels a little bit more defined to me, but obviously no hit singles," Greenblatt says of the 25-year-old R&B/pop singer and songwriter, adding that she thinks the frontrunners are Anitta, Muni Long, and Måneskin.
Also on this episode, we chat with Grammys host Trevor Noah and executive producer Ben Winston about what they've learned from the past two ceremonies they've been part of, whether Beyoncé will perform or if Winston's daughter — who is heard in the opening line of "As It Was" saying, "Come on, Harry, we want to say goodnight to you" — will join Styles for his performance, and more. You can read a portion of that interview below.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Trevor, you obviously plenty of hosting and stage experience, but being in front of an audience like this, what were you able to learn very quickly from the first two times around that maybe didn't work and you want to avoid again? And on the flip side, what do you hope to be able to lean more into this year?
TREVOR NOAH: Well, it's an interesting question because the first year is almost an outlier in that, yeah, we didn't have an audience [because of the pandemic], people weren't in the same room in the same way — you have these outdoor/indoor spaces where people are performing and rotating. So everything I sort of learned there isn't applicable to any other show other than the fact that I learned to truly enjoy the performance. Sometimes when you're doing a live award show you can focus so much on the production of it that you forget what's happening right in front of your eyes. And that is, some of the greatest talents of a generation are performing live in front of you. And that's something that's truly special. So I got to enjoy that. I got to see artists enjoying other artists. And so if anything, it taught me to be present in the moment, to focus on what's happening so I could sort of be the conduit to the audience, because if something happens, I'm going to talk about it — if something happens on the show, I'm going to say something. So I'm definitely present and I'm consuming all of that because I understand how amazing this [is]. It's just this live volcano that's erupting in front of our eyes, and it's beautiful to be a part of.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe you've ever uttered a note, sang any at all on the show. Will we hear a Trevor Noah compilation of all the year's nominated songs? Ben, have you tried to get him to sing?
BEN WINSTON: [Laughs] I have not. I mean, I dunno, Trevor, have you got it in your locker?
NOAH: [Laughs] So last year I got to handle my "beef" with Bruno [Mars] and Anderson .Paak, with Silk Sonic. I was cut out of the group. And we've handled that offline. And so this year I'll chat to a few people — Lizzo's going to be in the building; she's always there to help, like a backup dancer or somebody with little talent. So maybe I'll see if she has something for me, and then I'll go from there. But I'm also not the kind of person to upstage anybody on their night especially. You don't want people saying, "Oh wow, that was such an amazing performance from Trevor," and then they forget about all the amazing Album of the Year nominees. I mean, it is the greatest year of album nominees ever — I don't even understand how anybody's going to handle that drama or that tension. So yeah, I'll save my singing for this year and let everybody have their moment, and then maybe next year I'll start mixing things up.
Ben, Trevor mentioned Lizzo being one of the performers. We also know Bad Bunny, Brandy Carlile, among others. From your perspective, what is the biggest headache in terms of the logistics of pulling off a show with at least a dozen or so performances?
WINSTON: Yeah, it's a fair question. I'd say it's one of the toughest shows, if not the toughest show on television, to make because it's three and a half hours of live TV, you are dealing with the absolute A-listers of A-listers. On other music award shows, and I don't mean any disrespect by to this, but you're more likely have three or four big artists and then 10 smaller ones. On the Grammys, everybody's Grammy-nominated, everybody feels an A-lister, and they usually are. So you have all of those performances, plus they are saving their biggest performance over the year — set-wise, budget-wise, etc. — for the stage. So you are building huge structures in literally three or four minutes. Meanwhile there's an award going on, and then there's a countdown because someone's set's not ready on the other side. So it's this timing nightmare, all trying to get off the air in three and a half hours, and at the same time you are giving out 10, 12 awards. So, it's a really complicated show. The way I think about it is, we are looking this year at probably up to about 30 performers.
Holy cow.
WINSTON: And of course, some of them are going to come in and out [for the] "In Memorium," and some of them are going to come in certain tributes that we've got planned. And if you think about those 30, you've gotta assume that everybody brings, let's say, 10 people with them — some of them are going to bring 50 dancers, some of them are going to bring a choir of 15, some of them are going to bring a glam squad to look after the choir, and suddenly you are looking backstage at a live show for three and a half hours with 5,000 people running around trying to make sure that by the time they get on stage everything is running on time, the sound's working, the lights working, the sets built. And so I think that for me, I almost feel like that minute or two in the countdowns going live, it's almost like you are about to step off the side of a cliff and you are not 100 percent sure if your parachute's going to open, but you sort of hope it does. And so it's a very, very strange experience, quite an out-of-body experience. And I would say that that's the most complicated thing, in a way, is handling what is just a behemoth of a television program.
Some of those sets, in recent years Billy Eilish was in that water-filled house, and Tyler, the Creator, he had the burning neighborhood. What can you tease about some of the elaborate sets this year?
WINSTON: I absolutely never would, because it's not for me to say what they are. So I'm not. I wouldn't do any of that. But I would say that, yeah, you are absolutely right, they're really memorable and I think that that's what we want to do. We want to create these performances that are really memorable. I think about just even moments like Harry Styles opening a couple of years ago wearing a feather boa. He's only ever worn a feather boa once and you go to a gig, a Harry Styles gig, and you will see 40,000 feather boas. But that one performance at the Grammys — once, where he wore a feather boa — is the defining performance that means that the feather boa is now his thing. And it's really interesting, it shows the power of this show in that somebody can do one performance with one item of clothing, and now that is what they sell in merch stands, and he has never worn it since or before. So I think that speaks a lot to the defining moments that we have. A lot of people talk a lot about ratings and television ratings on this show — they miss the bigger story in last year's show had 94 billion social media impressions. And so I think that's what's really exciting about what we are doing. And hopefully we'll continue to do this year.
You mentioned Harry, does that mean that we may hear your daughter's voice on the Grammys this year if "As It Was" is performed?
WINSTON: Oh, that's such a clever way of asking. I have so much respect for you that you've nearly tricked me into something. Well, I don't know yet. I think we've got some really exciting performer announcements coming up over the next few days. What I can tell you is that if Ruby Winston is asked to perform, she 100 percent will. However, I will never allow that to happen. And I can categorically say that. As much as she would love it, it's never going to happen. But yeah, it's beautiful. I find it very moving whenever I hear that record — and the fact that it's the biggest record of last year, the No. 1 streamed record — and it's my little girl sitting on the toilet because that's where she was when she recorded it. It's a really lovely thing that will always be a lovely thing for her. And I don't think she really understands it yet, but one day when she's 25, she'll realize that's the coolest thing ever.
Okay, so I'm going to try another question here that you probably won't be able to answer straight up. The big question everyone wants to know is whether Queen Bey will be there. So on a scale of one to 10, what is the likelihood of a Beyoncé performance?
WINSTON: Never answering that in a million years.
Dang it.
WINSTON: Great question. I promise you that it's going to be a show that is really worth watching.
The 65th Grammy Awards air Sunday, Feb. 5, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS, and stream on Paramount+. Check out our full interview with Noah and Winston on the Awardist podcast (below), where Winston reveals the performance from the last two shows he produced that he's most proud of and the unexpected conversation he had about Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 2021 performance, and Noah weighs in on the packed Album of the Year category.
Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights leading up to all the major award shows.
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