Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Reuters
When Jon Batiste’s We Are won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2022, we at The Daily Beast called it a “puzzling” choice that kept with “the Grammys’ history of having its finger removed from the pulse.” Our critic Kyndall Cunningham even wrote, “I think if you polled the music-listening population, most people would say they’ve never listened to that album, let alone know that it exists.”
Batiste took home five awards that night, but his Album of the Year win was the most controversial, as We Are bested the heavily favored Sour by Olivia Rodrigo as well as Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever. What explanation could there be for an album that had only made it to No. 86 on the Billboard 200 winning the Grammys’ biggest prize, aside from the Recording Academy being totally out of touch?
As it turns out, the jazz-soul musician’s win was entirely predictable for structural reasons—which begs the question of whether or not we’re in for another Batiste-level upset at the 2023 Grammys this Sunday.