For Your Grammy Consideration

Between October 3rd -15th Grammy voters are shifting through all the songs and spoken word pieces that were submitted for the 2026 awards.

This year Trinidadian singer/ songwriters have really submitted songs that may receive the coveted nods. Close to 30 artistes in over 20 categories have put their music, and one spoken work piece in the hat for selection.

Over the weekend I spoke to music producer and assistant lecturer at the University of Trinidad and Tobago Martin “Mice” Raymond who spoke of the work of producer Kasey Phillips to lobby the Grammy is forgo its insistence on albums to allow for a wider category of global genres that aren’t album focused, like dancehall and soca.

Our artistes release songs and do a lot of live performances. A full album is rare. In soca for years Machel Montano was the only musician releasing annual soca albums, which is crazy by US music standards. And he remains the leader in number of albums and consistency.

The variety of songs entered this year are vast. Obviously the Global Music category is the most intuitive one for soca. But this year John Francis aka John Sweird’s album is on the Progressive R&B category. Etienne Charles in Jazz and Natalie Yorke in Rock.

Machel Montano has submitted Pardy, his album One Degree Hotter and Truth & Balance for consideration. Much has been made of Yung Bredda’s success with The Greatest Bend Over. And Kes The Band Cocoa Tea are all solid entries and could legitimately seal some nods.

Raymond, who has served as a Grammy voter in the past, says increasing applications is the first step in getting our music recognised, and for many years not enough artistes were submitting their music for consideration.

In a few weeks, it would be nice to revisit this post to discuss the Caribbean music nods.

Here is a link to a Spotify playlist of most of this years’ songs submitted for consideration. Etienne Charles does not allow his music on Spotify. But to be fair, you should just buy his album. It is crazy good, just based on the strength of his catalogue.