Is the Grammy for Best New Artist Cursed?

We investigate the claim that winning the Grammy for Best New Artist is the surest way to end your career.

Last week, when I wrote about who musicians thank at the Grammys, I came across a theory that those who are named Best New Artist are cursed, never to replicate their early success. In order to see if this year’s nominees - namely, Gracie Abrams, Fred Again, Ice Spice, Jelly Roll, Coco Jones, Noah Kahan, Victoria Monét, and The War and Treaty - should be concerned about winning, I decided to see how real this curse is.

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Is it Bad to be the Best?

1976 was a good year for the Starland Vocal Band. They had three songs chart on the Billboard Hot 100, one being the massive hit “Afternoon Delight”. Within a year, the quartet was hosting an eponymous CBS variety show - oddly, cowritten by a young David Letterman - and found themselves with four Grammy nominations. That success wouldn’t last, though.

Over the next few years, the group would only chart one more song on the Hot 100, “Loving You with My Eyes”, a slow-burning ballad that only peaked at 71. The group, comprised of two husband-and-wife pairs would, would break up in 1981. Both couples would divorce soon after.

When band member Taffy Nivert talked about “Afternoon Delight” on VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders, she pinned their demise on one thing: winning Best New Artist at the 1977 Grammys. "We got two … Grammys [and] one was Best New Artist”, she recalled. “So that was basically the kiss of death and I feel sorry for everyone who's gotten it since.”

I wanted to see if Nivert’s blame was well-placed. Do Best New Artist winners frequently falter? Scrolling through the list of winners, it’s not immediately clear. The Beatles won Best New Artist. So did Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, and Adele. That doesn’t seem like a bad group to join. But I’m just cherry-picking examples. Let’s see what the numbers say.

Best New Artist nominees at the 54th Grammy Awards. All have turned out just fine, including winner Bon Iver.

First, I grabbed all 63 Best New Artist winners between 1960 and 2023. I then tossed out Bob Newhart, the 1961 honoree, because he was a comedian. Comedians were nominated regularly in the first few years, but the practice quickly died. Because of that, it didn’t seem fair to include him in this investigation.

With the set of artists in hand, I needed to determine which had successful careers after their Best New Artist victory. My first marker of success was if the winner was later inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Country Music Hall of Fame, or Songwriters Hall of Fame. Given that you can only be enshrined in the latter two institutions 20 years after your first release and the former 25 years after your first release, I decided to focus on winners between 1960 and 1995, minus Newhart.