The Battle for Best New Artist by the Numbers

The music industry’s biggest up-and-comers battle it out each year for the coveted Best New Artist Grammy. But winning the award hasn’t always translated into sustained commercial success. Singers like Adele, Dua Lipa, and Billie Eilish have certainly followed up their wins with hit after hit on the charts. But for every Mariah Carey, there’s also an Evanescence. So what really makes a Best New Artist?

Understanding ambiguous criteria

Last year, the musically diverse roster of nominees up for the award included Ice Spice, Jelly Roll, Gracie Abrams, Coco Jones, Fred Again, Noah Kahan, The War and Treaty, and Victoria Monét. Ultimately, it would be R&B singer Monét delivering her acceptance speech that night, thanks to her strong debut studio album, Jaguar II, which netted her two other awards: Best R&B Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. Monét also earned nominations last year for her breakthrough song, “On My Mama,” including in the Record of the Year category.

As with most award shows, deciding who’s deserving of the title of “best” in any category can be super subjective and often controversial. And the Best New Artist nominations have routinely left viewers scratching their heads about why certain artists are included in the years that they are selected. According to the Grammys, to be recognized in the Best New Artist category, a contender “must have achieved breakthrough into the public consciousness and impacted the musical landscape during the year’s eligibility period.” That relatively broad description certainly gives music fans room to debate.

Assessing the competitors

Should breakthroughs be quantified by Top 10 hits in a given year? If so, then it was actually Ice Spice who would have had the edge, with three Top 10s for her singles “Karma” with pop superstar Taylor Swift, as well as “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World” with rap legend Nicki Minaj—all captured in our visual below. In fact, “Karma” peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. By contrast, Monét’s only song to make it onto the Hot 100 chart in 2023, “On My Mama,” peaked at No. 33, although it did fare better on more genre-specific charts. Like Monét, none of Ice Spice’s other fellow nominees scored Top 10s in 2023.