65th Grammy Awards - Beyonce leads the pack with nine nods

The needle is set over the ridges of vinyl records as the nomination for the 65th annual Grammy Awards was announced recently, with Beyonce leading the field with nine nods, Kendrick Lamar close behind with eight and Adele and Brandi Carlile tied with seven.

Four contenders enter the race with six nominations apiece: Future, Harry Styles, Mary J Blige, DJ Khaled and Randy Merrill, reported 'Variety'.

It's a field in which there are few of the major surprises that have marked other Grammy nominations rollouts in recent years, either in terms of bad surprises, like the shutout for the Weeknd two years ago or good ones, like Jon Batiste dominating the field last year.

According to 'Variety', the nominations generally went largely as predicted, with Beyonce, Adele, Styles, Lamar and Lizzo being the five contenders who were each nominated in the top three all-genre categories: record, album and song of the year.

Among the artists who did better than predicted in those top categories are Mary J Blige and ABBA, who both got to put up for record of the year and album of the year, but not the song. For Blige, it has been 16 years since she last landed nominations for a record or album.

The currently very hot Steve Lacy also landed in two of those three categories, being put into contention for both record and song for the recently chart-topping 'Bad Habit'.

Latin music did not have the breakthrough presence in the general categories that some expected. Bad Bunny was nominated for what many consider the top prize, the album of the year, for his blockbuster 'Un Verano Sin Ti'.

'Variety' further stated that it was not a landmark year for country music in the nominations either. Not a single country artist made it into the top four general categories.