While the obvious Grammy headlines are things like who won the big awards or who put on the best performances during the ceremony, there are usually some more peculiar takeaways to be had as well. For example, at yesterday’s 2022 Grammys, a 26-year-old song from a Super Nintendo Kirby game won an award, making it the first Nintendo song to ever do so. In similarly unexpected news, an unofficial album made up of songs inspired by the Netflix series Bridgerton also won a Grammy last night.
The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear (aka Barlow & Bear) was nominated in the Best Musical Theater Album category against works by legends like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Burt Bacharach but managed to win anyway.
A Recording Academy feature from shortly before this year’s Grammys notes the album was spawned from the “TikTok musical” trend that was popular in the early days of the pandemic, meaning it’s made up of songs originally created on TikTok. They also note it’s “the first musical of its kind to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theater Album. ”
The Academy also notes Barlow and Bear — at 23 and 20 years old, respectively — were the youngest-ever nominees for (and are therefore now the youngest ever winners of) a musical theater Grammy.
The Recording Academy feature offers more context about how the album came to be (including quotes from Barlow and Bear), so check it out here. Also find the full list of this year’s Grammy winners and nominees here.
