Beatles Among Rock Bands to Receive 2025 Grammy Nominations
Source: Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr attend the Stella McCartney Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on March 04, 2024 in Paris, France. (Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
The full list of nominations for the 67th Annual Grammy Awards was released Friday, featuring a few rock music staples from prior decades receiving honors.
Starting with the “Best Rock Album” award, the Black Crowes received a nomination for their album Happiness Bastards. Pearl Jam received a nomination for their record Dark Matter, and the Rolling Stones‘ Hackney Diamonds received honors as well. Other artists nominated for the category include Fontaines DC, Green Day, IDLES and Jack White.
For “Best Rock Performance,” Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter, from the album of the same name, was nominated. The Black Keys, Green Day, IDLES, St. Vincent and the Beatles also received honors for the nomination. Dark Matter was also nominated for “Best Rock Song.”
The Beatles’ nomination is due to the release of Now And Then, a project that took over five decades to complete. The song began as an unused John Lennon demo from the 1970s. The demo featured Lennon’s vocals with a piano track, which led to some complications.
In early 1995 the surviving Beatles, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, began collaborating on The Beatles Anthology series which would give the world its first new Beatles music in 25 years. Now And Then was intended to be released as part of the series, but due to the technological impossibility at the time of separating Lennon’s vocal from his piano, the track remained on the cutting room floor for another 27 years.
In 2022 Peter Jackson and his production team used a software system they had developed, which was used throughout the production of their documentary series Get Back, to isolate Lennon’s vocals to give the song a new lease on life. McCartney and Starr were able to resume production of the track, combined with Lennon’s original vocals and Harrison’s archival work on the project to finish the last song with contributions from all four Beatles.
