2023 Grammy Awards Predictions: Best Country Album
The 65th Annual Grammy Awards will be held in Los Angeles on Feb. 5. As the date of the award show closes in, country music fans might be wondering which artists will take home awards. Here are Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s predictions for the Best Country Album category at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
The nominees for Best Country Album at the 2023 Grammy Awards
Four awards make up the country category at the Grammy Awards: Best Country Solo Performance, Best Country Duo/Group Performance, Best Country Song, and Best Country Album.
Chris Stapleton is the most recent winner in the category, and he won the award at the 2022 Grammy Awards for Starting Over.
The nominees for Best Country Album at the 2023 Grammy Awards can be viewed below.
2023 Best Country Album nominees:
- Growin’ Up, Luke Combs
- Palomino, Miranda Lambert
- Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, Ashley McBryde
- Humble Quest, Maren Morris
- A Beautiful Time, Willie Nelson
Front-runner: Miranda Lambert for ‘Palomino’
This year, Lambert seems poised to be the likely winner of Best Country Album at the Grammy Awards. The singer released Palomino on April 29, 2022. Palomino is Lambert’s ninth studio album, and following its release, it received critical acclaim.
On top of that, 2022 was a huge year for Lambert. She won Entertainer of the Year at the 2022 American Country Music Awards. The singer also launched her own Las Vegas residency in 2022 called Miranda Lambert: Velvet Rodeo The Las Vegas Residency. The Velvet Rodeo.
When it comes to the Grammys specifically, Lambert also seems like a clear favorite. Of the nominated artists in the Best Country Album category, Lambert has already won twice, the most of the 2023 nominees.
On top of that, Lambert is nominated in all four country music categories at the 2023 Grammy Awards and she is the only 2023 country nominee to do so.
If that wasn’t enough, Palomino contains a handful of songs from Lambert’s collaboration album The Marfa Tapes, which received a nomination for Best Country Album at the 2022 Grammy awards.
Other artists could win Best Country Album
If Lambert does not win Best Country Album on Feb. 5, it’s possible other artists could take home the prize.
While not a confirmed strategy, there is a perceived pattern of the Recording Academy rewarding older artists, either as a way to honor a lifetime of achievement or to make up for artists not receiving their due in their prime.
Because of this, Nelson could win Best Country Album for A Beautiful Time. Even though Nelson is not nominated in every country category, he did receive three country music nominations and a fourth nomination for Best Roots Gospel Album.
If not Lambert or Nelson, Morris seems poised to pull an upset. The country singer also received three nominations in the country music categories, just one short of Lambert.
Meanwhile, Combs also received three nominations across the country categories while McBryde earned two nominations.
The 2023 Grammy Awards will be held at the Crypto.com Arena in LA on Feb. 5.
