Among the many nominees at the 64th GRAMMY Awards, several albums, songs and releases could've only come out of our world as it is now. The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the global racial reckonings and protests, that defined 2020 and 2021 also galvanized some of the best music and comedy.
This soul-searching work wasn't limited to any one genre or release format, presenting a spectrum of emotions from hopeful optimism, to despair, to ultimate catharsis. From rock titans Foo Fighters to comedy veteran Dave Chappelle, those who took on the tumult of the present did so from their own unique perspective.
For many, art is a refuge in a dark time, and these 2022 GRAMMY nominees rose to the moment. The eight nominated works below reflect the pandemic and fight for social justice in all its exhausting and uncertain — yet inspiring — contradictions.
Alicia Keys & Brandi Carlile — "A Beautiful Noise" (Song of the Year)
Released in October of 2020, right at the peak of United States’ presidential election jitters, two dynamic singer/songwriters came together for a rousing call to action. "A Beautiful Noise" is both an appeal for voter turnout and a showcase for the potent talents of Alicia Keys and Brandi Carlile.
The "A Beautiful Noise" music video features the two stars on duelling grand pianos in a warmly-lit room, and that's about it — but that’s all it needs. All the fireworks are contained in the two vocal performances and the subtle-yet-meaningful looks exchanged between Keys and Carlile.
In a statement accompanying the release, Carlile said she's "forever inspired" by Keys and jumped at the opportunity to "deliver this beautiful message through song" at a time when voting felt more urgent than ever.
H.E.R. — "Fight For You" (Song of the Year)
When R&B/soul sensation Gabriella Wilson — better known as H.E.R. — was approached to write a song for the film Judas and the Black Messiah, she drew an immediate parallel with the Black Lives Matter movement of present day.
Directed by Shaka King and released in February 2021, Judas and the Black Messiah dramatizes the complex relationship between Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) and FBI informant William O'Neill (LaKeith Stanfield) in late-1960s Cleveland. "They called me and said they need a song to bring the movie home," H.E.R. told Variety in a video interview.
Working alongside songwriter Tiara Thomas and producer D'Mile, H.E.R. created a protest song that deftly links past and present, drawing on the classic soul records that soundtracked her youth. "I really wanted the song to bring the two generations together," H.E.R. added. "I wanted to create a universal message that represented that fight that is still happening today."
Caribou — "You Can Do It" (Best Dance/Electronic Recording)
When the COVID-19 pandemic put Caribou's 2020 tour on hold, band leader Dan Snaith found himself with a lot of free time. Taking shelter with his family at home in London, the producer saw the first glimmer of good news in March 2021 as the vaccination rollout ramped up. To reflect his hope for the future, Snaith sat down at his home set-up and made 'You Can Do It,' a bright and infectious (in a good way) ode to optimism.
Snaith knew the single had to come out right then, before the world changed again. "People have had so much fear, anxiety and negativity in the last 18 months; the thought of being able to put something out into the world that was just positive, that just allowed people to feel happy and joyous again, was something that felt so right," he told Billboard last year. Its music video — featuring an array of cute dogs bouncing gleefully through open fields — only amplified the song’s joyful mood.
Foo Fighters — "Waiting On A War" (Best Rock Song)
Growing up outside Washington, DC, in the 1970s and 1980s, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl lived in fear of nuclear war. His anxiety about a nuclear attack, fueled in equal parts by the real-life Cold War and the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Day After, invaded his dreams and became a defining childhood memory. Four decades later, on a school run, Grohl's 11-year-old daughter casually asked if a war was coming. That weekend he wrote "Waiting On A War" to make sense of a fear that now crosses generations.
"This song was written for my daughter, Harper, who deserves a future, just as every child does," Grohl wrote in a statement to introduce the single, which appears on the band's tenth studio album, Medicine at Midnight. Beginning with the frontman's gravelly vocals over strummed guitar, "Waiting On A War" builds to an all-out anthem in the classic Foo Fighters mold.
Despite its heavy themes, Grohl revealed in a track-by-track album breakdown that he imagined "Waiting On A War" as "a song that we play every night for the rest of our lives, that everybody will sing along to."
Brandi Carlile — "Right On Time" (Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Pop Solo Performance)
Six-time GRAMMY winner Brandi Carlile spent the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic consumed by the same uncertainty as the rest of us, weathering the storm on her "compound" in Washington State with her wife, Catherine, and two young daughters. Out of that strange, fretful time came Carlile's seventh studio album, In These Silent Days. "Right on Time," the album's opening track and lead single, reflected all those stirred-up feelings as only Carlile can.
"In these silent days and this time that's been imposed on us spiritually as a global community, really significant things have happened," Carlile told Entertainment Weekly of "Right On Time." "Babies were born, divorces were had, people died, and there's something really human about the obstacles that we've put in front of ourselves, and then deciding to just somehow explode through it and say, maybe I didn't come out of this right, maybe I didn't handle this the right way, maybe it wasn't right, but something had to happen — so it was right on time."
Carlile stars in the video for "Right On Time" (artfully directed by Carlile's friend Courtney Cox), conveying the full sweep of emotions that she examines in the song's three and a half minutes.
Dave Chappelle — 8:46 (Best Spoken Word Album)
In June 2020, with the pandemic raging, comedy vet Dave Chappelle pulled together a socially distanced outdoor show in Ohio, billed as "A Talk with Punchlines." It was a forum for Chappelle to grapple with his anger and sadness about police brutality against Black Americans, with a particular focus on the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. On this night, jokes were a secondary concern.
Later that month, Netflix uploaded the 30-minute set to its YouTube channel as 8:46, with the title referencing the length of time Chauvin had his knee on Floyd's neck. Directed by documentary filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, 8:46 is raw and unpolished by design — and every bit as sobering as Chappelle intended.
Editor's Note: In October 2021, another Chappelle Netflix special, The Closer, was widely criticized for the comedian's comments about transgender people; it sparked a walkout in protest from hundreds of Netflix employees.
Maren Morris — "Better Than We Found It" (Best Country Song)
In October 2020, in advance of the U.S. presidential election, Texas-born country sensation Maren Morris released "Better Than We Found It," which she described as "a protest song" in the tradition of Bob Dylan and Nina Simone. Morris also committed a portion of proceeds from the single to the Black Women's Health Imperative.
"I still have hope for this country and for the future of it," Morris said in a statement at the time of the release, "and as a new mother I wanted to promise my son that I'm going to do everything in my power to leave this world better than the one I came into and the one I see right now."
The powerful music video is intercut with real-stories from people in Morris's Nashville community, including young activists for racial justice, teenagers facing fears of deportation and the family of Daniel Hambrick, a Black man killed by a Nashville police officer in 2018.
Bo Burnham — Inside / 'All Eyes On Me' (Best Music Film / Best Song Written For Visual Media)
In May 2021, Netflix uploaded Inside to its platform with a deceptively simple description: "A musical comedy special shot and performed by Bo Burnham, alone, over the course of a very unusual year." Within weeks, Inside had become one of the defining documents of our pandemic age.
Burnham masterfully flips quarantine-induced narratives — FaceTiming Mom, internet deep-dives — into catchy tunes, creating a commentary as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. The 90-minute special crescendos with Burnham's achingly intimate performance of "All Eyes On Me," which sees the comedian riff on the dark period that followed his decision to quit stand-up.
At once a razor-sharp pop music parody and a deep dive into its creator's psyche, "All Eyes On Me" is Burnham at his most unforgiving. Burnham has avoided interviews following the release of Inside, preferring to let the art speak for itself.