Grammy Nominations Include Six for Winehouse

With her husband in jail and her performing career currently on hold, Amy Winehouse has had little reason to celebrate lately.

Until yesterday.

The troubled chanteuse racked up a whopping six Grammy nominations Thursday, including nods for Best New Artist and Record, Song and Album of the Year.

"I'm honored to have my music recognized with these nominations," Winehouse said in response to the accolades. "This is a true validation from people I respect and admire."

It's a hopeful turn of events for the beehived singer, whose antics in recent days have included being snapped by the paparazzi shirtless and disheveled outside her home at 5:45 a.m.

Though the singer recently canceled all performing dates for the remainder of the year, she is expected to appear at the Feb. 10 awards ceremony, health permitting.

Winehouse isn't the only artist for whom the nominations represent a change in fortune.

Kanye West, who recently lost his mother, Donda West, following complications from cosmetic surgery, earned a leading eight nominations, including Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song and Best Rap Solo Performance.

Sorrowful king and queen of the Grammys though they may be, West and Winehouse will compete against each other in only one category—Album of the Year, where his Graduation will vie against her Back to Black.

Meanwhile, a Grammy nomination earned by UGK for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group was decidedly bittersweet for surviving member Bernard "Bun B" Freeman, whose partner Chad "Pimp C" Butler was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel earlier this week.

"As this was a lifelong dream for Chad, it warms my heart to know that he has finally gotten the recognition from the powers that be that his talent, passion and relentless drive for music so rightfully deserved," Freeman said in a statement.

Happily, for most of the nominees, the accolades were tinged with decidedly less melancholy.

Canadian sensation Feist called her four nominations "astounding and amazing and surreal."

"This news has hit me like the blizzard I'm in the middle of, up in the Canadian woods," the "1234" singer said in a statement. "I haven't quite absorbed it yet, so I'm going to go shovel the walk and make an apple cobbler now."

Likewise, Nelly Furtado compared her Grammy nods to being invited to the senior prom.

"Who wouldn't want to be invited to the prom?" the songbird said. "I was prom queen in high school, so I am thrilled and honored."

Some artists had little to say about their nods, namely because they were posthumous.

Gerald Levert, who died of an accidental overdose of prescription medications last year, earned a nod for Best Tradition R&B Vocal Performance, while guitarist Robert Lockwood, who died last year at 91, was nominated for Best Traditional Blues Album.

And, more than four years after his death, Johnny Cash was nominated for Best Short-Form Music Video for "God's Gonna Cut You Down."

Via eonline.com