On Feb. 5, the 65th annual Grammy Awards will air live from Crypto.com Arena (the former Staples Center) in Los Angeles. Since 1958, the Recording Academy of the United States has hosted the award show to recognize the year’s biggest achievements in music and the recording arts.
This year, a trio of Michigan artists are among the nominees. Here at BetMichigan.com, we thought a fitting way to analyze their chances of winning would be to create a set of hypothetical odds. These props will not be found at online Michigan sportsbooks but there are many other wagering options at those sites.
Considering that Detroit is the foundation of Motown Records, it’s no surprise that the state has dominated the Grammys throughout the show’s six and a half decades. Stevie Wonder (25), Aretha Franklin (18) and Eminem (15) are all among the most awarded winners in Grammy history to hail from Michigan.
This year, Detroit-born Diana Ross is back, nominated for her 2022 album Thank You. Jazzman Ron Carter is nominated for the sixth time. And leading all Michiganders with five nominations is pop superstar Lizzo.
But what chance do they have of winning?
Michigan online gambling sites offer slots, table games and more – but not wagers on awards.
Here are our hypothetical odds for each to win a Grammy.
Diana Ross has never won a Grammy!
Yes, the R&B singing legend received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Grammys in 2012. But despite being nominated five times as a solo artist and twice as a member of the Motown group The Supremes, the 78-year-old has never won in a competitive category.
The Boss Miss Ross has an incredible opportunity to fill – or should we say the Recording Academy has a chance to fix – this glaring oversight on her decades-long resume at the 65th Grammy Awards. We put her odds at 2/3, which would be expressed as -150 in American odds, or 60% implied probability of her winning.
Those odds would be even higher if Ross weren’t up against a heavyweight in this category. Canadian crooner Michael Bublé, up for the honor for his album “Higher,” has won this award four times and been nominated a staggering 10 times for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
Still, it will be difficult for Grammy voters to resist ticking the box beside Diana Ross while filling out their ballot.
It might seem strange to see Lizzo, who snagged five nominations, at such low odds to win in any of her categories. We say she’s 3/1, or +200 in American odds, suggesting there’s only a 25% implied probability of the pop star bringing home a trophy.
This has more to do with Lizzo’s competition than the Detroit native’s work. The other nominees for Record of the Year are Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Adele and Harry Styles — all of whom have more nominations this year than Lizzo, who is in that prestigious category for “About Damn Time.”
In addition, most pundits are framing the 65th Grammys as a rematch between Adele and Beyoncé, who faced off against each other in the Big Three Categories (Album, Record, and Song of the Year) in 2017. The English songstress took home all three of those awards. Lizzo is nominated in all three of those categories, as well as for Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album.
Lizzo, 34, probably has the best shot of winning Best Pop Solo Performance for “About Damn Time,” which was a major pop radio hit throughout last year and was widely considered to be the so-called “Song of the Summer” in 2022.
But she’d still have to beat out “Easy on Me” by Adele and “As It Was” by Harry Styles to win that category.
Born in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, jazz bassist and cellist Ron Carter got his start playing with the likes of Miles Davis in the early 1960s. At age 85, he the most recorded jazz bassist in history, appearing on more than 2,000 tracks.
Despite these accomplishments, Carter – nominated here for “Remembering Bob Freedman” – is a longshot in this category.
The frontrunner for Jazz Ensemble is “Center Stage,” a much splashier recording featuring some big names in the genre. This includes drummer Steve Gadd —the man behind the iconic “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” beat — and Ronnie Cuber, a saxophonist and former member of the Saturday Night Live house band, who died in 2022.
Also, Center Stages’ backing band is The WDR Big Band, which has been nominated six times, winning once in 2007.
With such stiff competition, the vet Carter faces an uphill battle to secure his third Grammy. We give him 9% implied probability.
Author
Jeff Parker is an entertainment and sports writer for BetMichigan.com. A writer for film, television and the internet, Jeff is a life long movie buff, with a Masters Degree in Popular Culture. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he works full time as documentary filmmaker and producer.
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