Shaggy’s Reggae Spin on Sinatra Songbook Lands 2023 Grammy Nod – Billboard

Shaggy’s Com Fly Wid Mi, which consists of 11 songs made well-known by Frank Sinatra, is competing for a Grammy in one of the best reggae album class. The album’s title, after all, is a reggafied twist on Sinatra’s jet-age basic “Come Fly With Me.”

Two earlier Sinatra tribute albums received Grammys for finest conventional pop vocal album – Tony Bennett’s Completely Frank (1992) and Willie Nelson’s My Manner (2018). Seven others had been nominated in that class — Barry Manilow’s Manilow Sings Sinatra (1999), Keely Smith’s  Keely Sings Sinatra (2001), Michael Feinstein’s The Sinatra Mission (2008), Bob Dylan’s Shadows within the Night time (2015), Fallen Angels (2016) and Triplicate (2017) and Nelson’s That’s Life (2021).

The Recording Academy says Shaggy’s album was submitted in one of the best reggae album class and was accepted by the reggae screening committee. It was by no means thought of within the conventional pop class. 

Copy on the entrance cowl of the album describes the mission this manner: “The Sinatra songbook inna reggae fashion. Sung by Shaggy. Produced by Sting.” Sting additionally sings on two of the tracks, “You Make Me Really feel So Younger” and “Witchcraft.” A collaborative album by Sting and Shaggy, 44/876, received a Grammy for finest reggae album 4 years in the past.

The opposite tracks on Com Fly Wid Mi are “That’s Life,” “Come Fly with Me,” “That Outdated Black Magic,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Luck Be a Girl,” “I’ve Bought You Beneath My Pores and skin” [shown here as “Under My Skin”], “Saturday Night time Is the Loneliest Night time of the Week” [shown here as “Saturday Night”), “Angel Eyes” and “Witchcraft” [a guitar and vocal “bonus track”].

That is Shaggy’s eighth nomination for finest reggae album. He has received twice within the class for Boombastic (1995) and the aforementioned 44/876. Shaggy’s solely nomination exterior of this class was for “It Wasn’t Me,” a collab with Ricardo “RikRok” Ducent, which was nominated for finest pop collaboration with vocals. The track topped the Billboard Scorching 100 for 2 weeks in February 2001.

Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me” was one in every of his most iconic hits. His album of the identical title topped the Billboard 200 for 5 consecutive weeks in February and March 1958 and acquired Grammy nominations for album of the yr and finest vocal efficiency, male within the first yr of the Grammys. The album was inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame in 2004.

Sinatra, broadly considered one of many most interesting vocalists of the twentieth Century, received 9 Grammy Awards, from 1958 (finest album cowl for his design work on Frank Sinatra Sings for Solely the Lonely) to 1995 (finest conventional pop vocal album for Duets II).

Sinatra was the primary artist to win album of the yr twice, and likewise the primary artist to win it thrice. In all of the years since, simply three different artists have received album of the yr thrice as a lead artist – Stevie Surprise, Paul Simon (counting a Simon & Garfunkel album) and Taylor Swift. Adele would be part of their ranks if she wins on the sixty fifth annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 5.

Sinatra acquired a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 1966, a trustees award in 1979 and a Grammy legend award in 1994. Bono offered the latter award after delivering an exquisitely written speech. A clearly moved Sinatra, who was 78 at that time, began to ramble in his acceptance remarks. Sadly, the Grammy manufacturing workforce minimize him off mid-speech and minimize to a business. The reason was they didn’t need the nice star to embarrass himself on reside TV. That could be, however it may have been dealt with with extra foresight and beauty. This was Sinatra’s remaining look on the Grammy telecast. He died in 1998 at age 82.

This yr’s different nominees for finest reggae album are Kabaka Pyramid’s The Kalling, Koffee’s Gifted, Sean Paul’s Scorcha and Protoje’s Third Time’s the Allure.

The Grammy guidelines for finest conventional pop vocal album say this about what the class is meant to honor: “This class is for performances of a sort and magnificence of track that can’t correctly be intermingled with current types of pop music. This contains older types of conventional pop such because the Nice American Songbook, created by the Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the interval between the Twenties and the tip of World Battle II, in addition to cabaret/musical theater-style songs and former types of up to date pop. This is able to additionally embody up to date pop songs carried out in conventional pop fashion — the time period ‘conventional’ being a reference, equally, to the fashion of the composition, vocal styling and the instrumental association, with out regard to the age of the fabric.”