Silk Sonic Pulls Out On GRAMMYs 2023 AOTY Race Amid Strong Competition: Here's Why

Silk Sonic
Rich Fury/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Silk Sonic will be leaving the door once and for all after revealing that they would not be submitting their album, "An Evening With Silk Sonic," up for 2023 GRAMMY Awards consideration.

The musical duo's exit from GRAMMY consideration comes as a shock to everyone, as predictions put the album as a great consideration for Album of the Year.

Bruno Mars, one-half of Silk Sonic, exclusively told Rolling Stone that they would be bowing out their album for consideration this year.

"We truly put our all on this record, but Silk Sonic would like to gracefully, humbly and most importantly, sexually, bow out of submitting our album this year. We hope we can celebrate with everyone on a great year of music and partake in the party. Thank you for letting Silk Sonic thrive," he said in a statement.

Silk Sonic made a clean sweep on all of their nominations last 2022 GRAMMYs - taking home Best R&B Song, Best R&B Performance, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year for "Leave the Door Open."

Fans have particularly noted how Bruno Mars was an Academy favorite considering he has won all nominations starting 2014 until 2022 - he already has 15 GRAMMY Awards out of the 31 nominations he was in.

Should the duo haven't opted out on next year's race - they would have been present for three consecutive shows while representing the same acts. In 2021, they performed "Leave the Door Open" despite not being nominated for the show. This year, the duo opened the show with "777" and "Hot Music" from "An Evening With Silk Sonic." If they were in the next year, they would most likely receive an award for the highly-acclaimed album.

For context, "Leave the Door Open" was eligible for the last 2022 GRAMMYs as it was released on March 2021. Meanwhile, "An Evening With Silk Sonic" was released only in November 2021, when the eligibility period for the 2023 GRAMMYs had already kicked in.

"An Evening With Silk Sonic" debuted only at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 charts with 104,000 equivalent album units. Eventually, the album was released on Vinyl, earning 37,000 copies - marking the largest sales week for an R&B album on Vinyl.

As for the 2023 GRAMMYs, the race for the Album of the Year category remains tight as records from Beyonce, Adele, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, and Bad Bunny were already considered shoo-ins.

Tags
Grammys
Join the Discussion
Real Time Analytics