Grammys 2023: Beyoncé ties Jay-Z for nominations record and battles Adele and Harry Styles for awards

Beyoncé is not only ‘Break[ing] My Soul’ but is also breaking Grammy Award records as her nine 2023 nominations marks her as the most nominated music act in the history of the show, alongside her husband Jay-Z.

The famous couple hold 88 nominations apiece and continued to top categories as the Recording Academy revealed the contenders for the 65th awards show on Tuesday, 15 November.

Beyoncé's LP ‘Renaissance’ has been recognised in the best album of the year as well as best dance/electronic album, while ‘Break My Soul’ was named in record and song of the year.

Other nods to Beyoncé's work included ‘Virgo’s Groove’ in the R&B performance section, ‘Plastic on the Sofa’ in traditional R&B and ‘Cuff It’, Beyoncé's hit song, which trended on TikTok, has appeared in best R&B song category.

The 41-year-old singer will compete against her husband in February 2023 as Jay-Z picked up five nominations too on Tuesday, however the main focus falls on Beyoncé versus Adele as the latter British vocalist scooped seven nominations including record, song and album of the year.

The recent announcement is reminiscent of the 2017 Grammys when Adele faced off against Beyoncé in the major categories and came up trumps with five wins for her album ‘25’.

The Easy on Me singer is a self-proclaimed Bey-fan and acknowledged the then-pregnant Formation artist during her acceptance speech by calling her the ‘artist of her life’.

She said in 2017: “[The Lemonade album] was so monumental and so well thought out and so beautiful and so soul-bearing, and we all got to see another side of you that you don’t always let us see and we appreciate that.”

The Recording Academy’s choices of nominees show that nearly half of the leading nominees are women and more than half are people of colour.

Although the leading ladies are a main focus following the 65th Grammy nominations announcement, other prominent performers were recognised as Kendrick Lamar walked away with eight nominations and the likes of Harry Styles and Mary J. Blige clinched six each.

The Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr said there has been a huge stride in the voting system as seen by the varied award categories.

He said: “We have almost 13,000 voters now. I’m pleased to think that they spent the time listening to the music and evaluating. I think you see by the type of nominations that they are not only going for popular music or music that has a lot of streams. It’s just music of high quality.”

The 65th Grammy Awards will air on 5 February 2023 from Los Angeles.