With the release of nominees for the 55th annual Grammy Awards, Dustin takes a look at a few of the oddities that seem to stand out more than others.

Photo from: http://www.gather.com

This is the full list of Grammy Nominees for 2013. It is quite extensive and honestly, I’m not entirely convinced that half of those categories need to exist, case in point: Best Album Notes but let’s not focus on that, instead, let’s turn our attention to the odd selection of nominees that we’ve come to expect from the Grammy’s.

• Carly Rae Jepsen: Grammy Maybe?- I don’t know what the difference is between Record of the Year and Song of the Year, but I do know that Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” has the chance to be Song of the Year. Now, I don’t listen to much radio these days, but when the other nominees include Ed Sheeran (who?) Miguel Pimentel (uh?) Kelly Clarkson and fun., then I think there’s a good chance we could be referring to Grammy Award Winning Carly Rae Jepsen. Let that sink in. 
• Album of the Year? More Like Hipster of the Year- Viewers and fans alike were shocked when Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” won Album of the Year honors two years ago, this year, the contenders are the Black Keys, fun., Frank Ocean, Mumford and Sons and Jack White. I own three of these albums and I still know that the deserving album here is Jack White’s “Blunderbuss,” if you haven’t heard it, please seek it out, just because the White Stripes are done doesn’t mean White is. However, I’d be shocked if it didn’t go to Mumford and Sons, arguably the most “mainstream” band on this list, but just seeing Jack White, the Black Keys and Frank Ocean on this list makes me think maybe I’m not too out of touch with reality.
• Record of the Year Bloodbath- Song of the Year may seemingly be a Jepsen-lock but ROTY is shaping up to be a bigger fight than “Best Rap Album” (more on that in a moment.) While the Black Keys and Kelly Clarkson are nothing to scoff at, there’s a three-headed monster here in fun., Gotye and Taylor Swift. It’s hard to determine which song best sums up the year, “We Are Young” and “Somebody That I Used to Know” brought fun. and Gotye to the masses respectively but “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is yet another smash hit from Taylor Swift that shows yet again, the girl can write a pop song. This also being Swift’s (Gasp!) only nomination, it’s tough to make her anything but the favorite.
• 2-Chainz!- “The nominees for Best Rap Album are; Drake, Lupe Fiasco, Nas, Rick Ross and 2-CHAINZ!” is a sentence we get to hear next year. I’m too excited to see 2-Chainz here to be mad that neither “Watch the Throne” nor “Cruel Summer” made the cut. All my fingers and toes are crossed for a 2-Chainz victory; “All I want for my birthday is a big booty hoe” is a line that deserves a Grammy if I’ve ever heard one.
• This List is a Lot of fun.- Pop band fun. are nominated for 5 of the biggest categories including Record, Song and Album of the Year. Ignoring the fact that the album nominated is their second, they’re also nominated for Best New Artist so take that with a grain of salt.
• A Few Extra Notes- Skrillex is nominated for a few more Grammy’s, pushing dubstep’s credibility ever higher and my faith in music a little lower, Kelly Clarkson finds herself with a couple major nominations, Coldplay is nominated for Best Rock Album and someone will have to choose between R. Kelly and Tyrese for Best R&B Album, decisions decisions. Also, there’s a distinct lack of “Gangam Style” that I find disturbing, I sincerely hope they’re booking Psy for the greatest Grammy performance ever.

Dustin Brewer is co-creator of HefferBrew. You can follow him on Twitter @dstnbrwr for more of his outdated and largely irrational opinionated takes on music.