Machine Gun Kelly Snubbed While Jon Batiste Lands 11 Noms, Proving Grammy’s Focus Is Finally on Music Again

If you don’t know the name Jon Batiste, you’re not a true musichead. The 35-year-old musician made a name for himself as the bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but he’s capable of so much more than playing ba-dum-dum after every joke. He’s a musician’s musician, and for once he’s getting his due with a whopping 11 Grammy nominations.

“Well, I heard the first two [nominations] and then after that there was so much hollering in the room that I had to get an update every time another nomination came in … There is so much happening for me in my life right now,” he shared with Colbert on the late-night show. “And this is happening and there is something in this that is bigger than me and just adulation for me that I have to learn in this. I’m so grateful.”

Batiste’s album We Are nabbed noms for album of the year, best traditional R&B performance, best R&B album, best improvised jazz solo, best jazz instrumental album, best American roots performance, best American roots song, best contemporary classical composition, best score soundtrack for soul and best musical video and record of the year for the album’s single “Freedom.”

“You go so deep into your own personal narrative. Your lineage. Your traditions, everything that makes you who you are and then you start to look out at the title of the album We Are and you see how it connects us all,” he told CBS Mornings correspondent Vladimir Duthiers. “It’s a universal feeling that you get from hearing that music, that I really am all about in anything that I create and I am glad we were able to achieve that in this.”

Batiste being the most-nominated musician for the 2022 Grammys proves that the awards are back on track and recognizing true musicianship for once. Need further proof? Machine Gun Kelly (aka Megan Fox’s boy toy) was completely shut out of the awards. MGK only had one question in response: “wtf is wrong with the grammys”

Funny, we were wondering the same thing about him.

Here’s hoping Batiste wins big when the Grammys air on Jan. 31, 2022.

Cover Photos: Rich Fury/MTV VMAs 2020 / Contributor and Nancy Rivera/Bauer-Griffin / Contributor (Getty Images)

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