Best Album confusion? Recording Academy drops Taylor Swift from Olivia Rodrigo's album credit

If Olivia Rodrigo beat Taylor Swift at the Grammys this year, the latter won’t be going to the stage anymore. She could have gone earlier as Taylor had been credited for Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Sour’ as she had been listed as a nominee for the album due to an interpolation on the album. However, the Recording Academy has updated its list of nominees and excluded all names that were previously there.

Olivia’s ‘Sour’ is in competition with Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’ album.

After the Grammys changed the lists, Taylor is no longer a part of Olivia’s songwriting team. Also, other names including St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, and Jack Antonoff have been removed. The above names and Taylor Swift had co-written ‘Cruel Summer’, a song from ‘Lover’ album which Olivia Rodrigo and her team credited as an interpolation in the hit ‘Deja Vu’ even though it bore only the most modest similarity to the Swift album track.

Also read: Crying buckets! Pink's video call with dying fan restores faith in celebrity role models

While removing these names, the Recording Academy said that its policy is not to include the writers of interpolated songs in nominations, and that it did so in the case of Rodrigo only because of a submission that incorrectly named Swift, Clark and Antonoff as full co-writers. Yearender 2021: Britney Spears to Armie Hammer: Celebs who got mired in controversies this year

In a statement, Recording Academy said, “During the submission process, the Academy received credits from the label for the track ‘Deju Vu’. Last week, we received the correct credits from the label that recognize Annie Clark, Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift as songwriters of an interpolation on the track ‘Deja Vu.’ In keeping with current Grammy guidelines, as songwriters of an interpolated track, Clark, Antonoff and Swift are not nominees in the album of the year category for ‘Sour.'”