Grammy Nominations for Radiohead

Radiohead’s latest album, ‘In Rainbows’ has been nominated for a Grammy award. The nomination for Best Album was announced on a CBS special concert special.

‘In Rainbows’ has to compete with Coldplay’s ‘Viva La Vida’ and Lil Wayne’s ‘Carther III’. Coldplay received seven nominations by the Recording Academy this year. Lil Wayne even topped that with eight nominations. Other albums nominated for Album of the Year were ‘Year of the Gentleman’ by Ne-Yo, ‘Raising Sand’ by Alison Kraus and Robert Plant. Radiohead have never won the award, even though Radiohead have been nominated for the Album of the Year award twice (for OK Computer & Kid A).

Radiohead’s seventh album is also nominated for Best Alternative Album together with albums by Beck, Death Cab for Cutie, Gnarls Barkley, and My Morning Jacket. So far, Radiohead have won the award twice (for OK Computer & Kid A) after being nominated for every release since ‘OK Computer’, including the ‘Airbag’ EP and Thom Yorke’s ‘The Eraser’.

The Discbox edition of ‘In Rainbows’ is nominated for a Grammy as well for ‘Best boxed or limited edition package‘. If ‘In Rainbows’ wins, Stanley Donwood, Mel Maxwell & Xian Munro can pick up the prize as the credited art directors. It would be a first if a Radiohead release wins in this category. This is also the first nomination. Previously, Stanley Donwood & Dr. Tchock picked up the award for ‘Best Recording Package’ with Amnesiac’s special edition, which would’ve fit nicely in the the current category, but let’s not get into that right now.

‘House of Cards’ is also up for several nominations. The track from ‘In Rainbows’ is nominated in both ‘Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals‘ and ‘Best Rock Song‘. James Frost (director) and Dawn Fanning (producer) are nominated for their  video for ‘House of Cards’ in the ‘Best Short Form Music Video‘ category.
Radiohead were previously nominated for Best Rock Performance with ‘There There’ but didn’t win

Longtime producer Nigel Godrich is nominated for ‘Producer of the Year‘ for his work on ‘In Rainbows’. So far, despite several nominations, Nigel only won an award for ‘Best Engineered Album’ with Radiohead’s ‘Hail to the Thief’. And last, but not least, Jonny Greenwood missed out on an Oscar last year, due to some weird rules of the Academy Awards. But the Radiohead guitarist might still win a big prize for his score for ‘There Will Be Blood’ as the soundtrack has been nominated in the ‘Best Soundtrack‘ category. Jonny will be competing with James Newton Howard for ‘The Dark Knight’, John Williams for ‘Indiana Jones’, Ramin Djawadi for ‘Iron Man’, and Thomas Newman for ‘Wall-E’

All in all, quite a number of nominations. In Rainbows got a total of 7 (related) Grammy nominations, Radiohead’s highest ever number, including their third nomination for Album of the Year, and their first time being nominated for a songwriting award (for ‘House of Cards’).  The Grammy Awards are scheduled for live broadcast on CBS on February 8, 2009.

[thx Paul]

Radiohead news on this day..

• Atoms For Peace set new date for album and reveal artwork. Pre-order available – 2012
• Radiohead Box to include bonus live album – 2007
• European dates and venues now revealed – 2007
• Thom performs 2 new tracks for ‘From the basement’ – 2006
• Moby on his ‘Creep’ covers – 2003
• Amnesty skateboard auction starts tomorrow – 2003
• Radiohead’s Grammy nominations – 2003
• Ateaseweb.com wins ‘Best Fan Site’ award – 2003
• How about that Radiohead DVD? – 2003
• NME’S Radiohead feature – 2003