The Grammy Awards will be presented on Mon. Feb, 15 in a three hour long program televised on CBS.  If you go to the Grammy website, you will discover that there 83 categories from Record of the Year to Best Music Film.  Obviously not all of those will be presented on Feb, 15 or the program will run well into Monday.  Music lovers can check out some of these nominees from the library’s CD collection or download them from Freegal.

The library does not have all of the nominated items, but it does have a representative sampling.  From Taylor Swift for her album, “1989” which is nominated in several categories to Tony Bennett who is once again nominated in the Traditional Vocal Album category for “The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern, the Grammy Awards are incredibly diverse.

 

One of the nominees in several categories is jazz artist, Jimmy Greene, whose album, “Beautiful Life,” is about his daughter who was one of the victims in the Newtown shooting.  “Hamilton: An American Musical” that is sold out for months on Broadway is nominated for Best Musical Theater.  “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars to “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran to “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift are all nominated for Record of the Year.

 

Other artists such as Chris Stapleton, Kelly Clarkson, Alabama Shakes, Ellie Goulding, Little Big Town, Kacey Musgraves, Carrie Underwood, Foo Fighters, Florence and the Machine, Maroon 5, Bob Dylan, Josh Groban, Jonas Kaufmann, Barry Manilow, Meghan Trainor, Sam Hunt, Common, Andra Day, James Taylor, Death Cab for Cutie, Muse, Chris Tomlin, and the Punch Brothers are all nominated.

 

Freegal, the library’s download service, is available 24/7 to anyone with a Bridgeport library card.  It has over 7 million songs as well as a collection of videos.  Cardholders can download three songs per week starting every Monday.  Many of the artists can be found on Freegal.  It is a good place to sample some of the artists with which you might not be familiar.  Once you download your three songs, they are yours until you delete them from your computer or device.