While music fans are gearing up to see their favorite artist perform or receive a music award at the Billboard Music Awards, there are already a couple of stand outs. The Weeknd has been nominated for 16 awards, and BTS is nominated for the Top Social Artist Award for the fifth year in a row.
Some fans of The Weeknd were disappointed that their favorite artist was not nominated at the recent Grammy Awards. Even though this is the case, the two award shows place slightly different emphasis on their nominees. The Billboard Music Awards are about celebrating the artist that rank highly on their charts. In order to do so the artist would need lots of radio play, sales and streams. Among the 16 music awards that The Weeknd is up for include top male artist, top R&B artist, top Billboard 200 Album for After Hours, and top Hot 100 song for “Blinding Lights”-the No.1 song of last year. Surprisingly, a new rap artist, DaBaby, has received 11 nominations due to his hit “Rockstar” and his feature on Jack Harlow’s “What’s Poppin”. He is nominated more than once in some categories like top rap song, top streaming song and top collaboration.
Pop Smoke, who was fatally shot at his home earlier in the year at the age of 20, has 10 nominations. His unfortunate death came at a time where fans were beginning to listen to his singles and mixtapes, if he didn’t pass away so soon he could have become a larger star in his genre. His debut album Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon was successful on the Billboard charts. He also had three platinum songs on the charts: “For the Night”, “What You Know About Love”, and “Dior” (which earned him a Grammy nomination). His Billboard music award nominations include top new artist, top male artist, top rap artist and top Billboard 200 album.
Juice WRLD, another artist who died at the age of 21 over an accidental overdose of pain medication, has an album released posthumously entitled Legends Never Die set several Billboard records- which hasn’t happened since Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. released posthumous albums in 1997. He has received seven Billboard nominations including top male artist, top rap artist, and top Billboard 200 artist.
The top album category is competitive because it features all of the artist mentioned earlier in this article and Taylor Swift’s Folklore, which became her third album of the year at the Grammys. While all of the albums in the category have done well on the charts, Folklore has a good chance of winning in this category as Swift specifically wanted to make an album that people could relate to during the coronavirus pandemic and it did well on the charts, which resonates with a lot of people and will likely earn her the Billboard award.
Morgan Wallen, who wasn’t allowed to compete at this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards because he was caught on camera using a racial slur, is still nominated in several Billboard categories including top song sales artist, top country artist, and top country album for Dangerous: The Double Album, and top country song. According to Dick Clark Productions, Wallen will be able to participate at the Billboard Awards because they are based on popularity and sales, and Wallen had the No.1 album on the charts for three consecutive weeks; however, he is banned from physically participating in the show.
The Billboard Awards are based on the chart period of March 21,2020 to April 3, 2021. The show will air on NBC on May 23, 2021 at 7p.m. CDT.