Molly Tuttle has bluegrass music running through her veins. The California-born artist first picked up a guitar when she was 8 years old, and was a regular fixture with The Tuttles & AJ Lee, the family band fronted by her father, prior to breaking away to pursue a solo career.

Today, Tuttle is a revered bluegrass guitarist; and the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Award for Guitar Player Of The Year in 2017 — an honor she won the following year as well. A string of other awards have followed come as the 30-year-old continues to break new ground and build upon her already impressive musical legacy. At the 2023 GRAMMY Awards, Tuttle is nominated for Best New Artist and her Crooked Tree for Best Bluegrass Album.

While first three projects included country, folk, pop and punk sounds, Tuttle returned to the sweet string music of her youth on Crooked Tree. Over its 13 tracks, Tuttle oscillates between Hazel Dickens-esque bluegrass and Lynn Anderson-inspired California country to tell stories of pride, paving your own path, and making room in your "Big Backyard" for everyone.

The sonic move resulted from longing for the communal nature of bluegrass music during the dog days of the pandemic, leading her to — as she often has — include as many friends on the project as possible. Crooked Tree, Tuttle's third album, features everyone from Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor to Billy Strings, Gillian Welch, Sierra Hull, Dan Tyminski and Margo Price.

With plans to return to the studio again in 2023, there’s no telling who she’ll bring in to join her next.  GRAMMY.com sat down with Tuttle to discuss  how music makes her feel more comfortable in her own skin, and what she thinks of being labeled a trailblazing woman in bluegrass.

Where do these GRAMMY nominations stack up with your other awards and career accomplishments to date? 

It’s a highlight of my career to be recognized by the GRAMMYs. The bluegrass GRAMMY is something I was really hoping I’d be nominated for; I grew up in the bluegrass world and felt like it was finally time to make my first real bluegrass album. I’ve always loved the bluegrass community, so that recognition really does mean a lot to me.   

To also be nominated for Best New Artist in a general category is something I wasn’t really expecting but am humbled by. It can be a hard, discouraging life on the road touring all year, but things like this make me smile and feel like I’m on the right track.  

You’ve mentioned in the past the impact that Hazel Dickens, Alison Krauss and other groundbreaking women in bluegrass have had on you. What are your thoughts on how you fill that role for many in the present? 

There’s several songs on [Crooked Tree]  that were directly inspired by people like Hazel Dickens and Gillian Welch, who actually ended up singing with me on the song “Side Saddle.” Those were my early songwriting heroes. This record was a big return to my roots and coming back to the music that I grew up listening to.

Even though artists like Hazel Dickens were very outspoken in their work, I feel like most people don’t think that bluegrass tackles progressive subjects like feminism and worker’s rights. She was one of the first women to lead her own bluegrass band and sing about these issues that meant a lot to her and were still very taboo at the time. It was, and still is, very inspiring to me.

I feel the same about Gillian Welch and her knack of creating songs that sound timeless but at the same time are relevant to who she is as a person. I’m always going back and looking for inspiration in both of their music as a way of honoring and carrying on the tradition of their trailblazing ways.

Bluegrass, and music in general, is often a male dominated world. Is that the dynamic that you’re touching on in your song “Side Saddle”? 

On that song I’m channeling the feelings of playing the guitar and, more specifically, how the guitar world is so male dominated. The song is about being a cowgirl and feeling like you have to adhere to a standard set by men to prove yourself worthy in a man’s world. That’s how I often felt…like there was always this extra attention on me and people picking apart my playing in ways they never did with male guitarists.

When I was starting out I felt like the guys I played with were always taking these big musical risks that I didn’t feel the same liberty to take because of all the extra attention on me and my playing. If I made a mistake, the stakes were always higher.  I don’t feel that constant pressure to have to prove myself anymore. The people I surround myself with now are always very supportive. I feel like I’ve created a world where I’m more free to take risks and make mistakes like anyone else.

What have you done, and what would you like to see done to make bluegrass a more welcoming place for women, people of color and other marginalized groups? 

There’s been a big push in recent years to make the space more inclusive. A lot of my friends and I will talk about how queer people, people of color, women, we’ve always been a part of this music, but we haven’t always been recognized and treated equally within its circles.

I’ve done a lot of work with Bluegrass Pride, an organization which started in California that now hosts events nationwide with the mission of making bluegrass music welcoming to everyone. Organizations like that not only change people’s perspectives about what bluegrass is, but they also help everyone already within the world of bluegrass feel more seen, included and uplifted.

I understand Crooked Tree was inspired by your paternal grandfather. How has he influenced you, musically and otherwise? 

A lot of my early musical memories, like hearing my grandpa play at my first bluegrass festival, inspired the music on this album. I dedicated the project to him because without him I don’t know that I’d even be playing music.

My grandfather played the banjo and was a rural farmer in Illinois, which is also where my dad grew up. He taught my dad how to play everything from the fiddle to the mandolin, guitar and banjo. They’d regularly play, travel around to bluegrass festivals and listen to the Grand Ole Opry together.

After college, my dad ended up moving out to California where he planned to begin working in finance until he stumbled into a music store in Palo Alto. It led to him teaching banjo and eventually all bluegrass instruments. He was my first guitar teacher, something that likely wouldn’t have happened if my grandfather hadn’t taught him all those years before. 

I wanted this album to honor [my grandfather] with music that I know he’d love if he were still around. I actually drove up to Illinois to visit the old farm with my grandmother, which was very nostalgic. Once I got back to Nashville, I ended up writing the song “Flatland Girl” that Margo Price joined me in singing on for the record.

You initially planned for Crooked Tree to have more of a poppy sound before recasting it as a bluegrass record. What circumstances led to that shift in sound? 

Early in the pandemic I was experiencing a creative lull due to the shock of no longer being able to tour. It led to me recording a cover album, …but i’d rather be with you. I started to get back into writing, but I was still having a hard time feeling inspired and didn’t know which direction I wanted to go in next.

At first I thought I’d continue pushing outside of the bluegrass and Americana box since the cover album leaned more toward the pop end of things. I started writing songs with a bunch of different people but none of them seemed to fit together into one cohesive group. The longer the shutdown went on, the more I started to miss festivals — especially bluegrass festivals, and the communal nature that had you playing on stage one minute and around a fire in nearby campgrounds the next. It made me realize that it was finally time to make my first real bluegrass album to pay tribute to the music I grew up with.

Once I decided that was okay, I was no longer scared of being pigeon-holed as a bluegrass artist. Immediately the songs started pouring out, leaving me really inspired. From there I found friends who also loved writing that music like Ketch [Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show], Melody Walker, Becky Buller and Mark Simos. Those four people are who I wrote the whole album with.

For nearly a year and a half I struggled to figure out what I’d do next musically. Then, in the span of a few months, I suddenly had a full album of songs.

My favorite song on Crooked Tree is the title track, which focuses on embracing our differences and insecurities rather than letting them weigh us down.

That’s a tune that I wrote with Melody that touches on our mutual feelings of growing up and being different from those around us. For me that inspiration stems partly from losing my hair. At a young age I was diagnosed with alopecia areata and my hair has never grown back. I’ve been completely bald my whole life and have been wearing wigs since I was 15. Even prior to that, though, I always felt like I stood out. I wasn’t able to fully embrace that and not be ashamed about wearing a wig until my early 20s.   

It’s a personal message that I’ve always felt was important for me to portray in my music. I feel like everybody has something that makes them feel different, so my goal with the song was to show why it’s worthwhile to embrace those things, because ultimately it’s what makes us the unique individuals we are.

What has music taught you about yourself? 

Music has taught me how to be with and express myself. When I was a kid, I was so closed and didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to about what I was feeling inside. Music for me was a safe place where I could express my feelings, which has led to me being more comfortable with those tough feelings and communicating them to others.

Music is also a way for me to connect with people. For me the best part of music is when I hear a song that someone else wrote but I have the same exact experience as them, which really helps me to connect with that person. It’s a way for all of us to better understand that we’re not alone.

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Six years after her last solo studio album, Beyoncé returned to the music industry with a bang thanks to RENAISSANCE. In homage to her late Uncle Johnny, she created a work of art inspired by the sounds of disco and house that wasn't just culturally impactful — it was history-making.

At the 2023 GRAMMYs, RENAISSANCE won Best Dance/Electronic Album. Marking Beyoncé's 32nd golden gramophone, the win gave the superstar the record for most gramophones won by an individual act.

In this episode of GRAMMY Rewind, revisit the historic moment Queen Bey took the stage to accept her record-breaking GRAMMY at the 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards.

"Thank you so much. I'm trying not to be too emotional," Beyoncé said at the start of her acceptance speech. "I'm just trying to receive this night."

With a deep breath, she began to list her praises that included God, her family, and the Recording Academy for their continued support throughout her career. 

"I'd like to thank my Uncle Johnny, who is not here, but he's here in spirit," Beyoncé proclaimed. "I'd like to thank the queer community for your love and inventing this genre."

Watch the video above for Beyoncé's full speech for Best Dance/Electronic Album at the 2023 GRAMMYs. Check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of GRAMMY Rewind. 

Tune into the 2024 GRAMMYs on Sunday, Feb. 4, airing live on the CBS Television Network (8-11:30 p.m. LIVE ET/5-8:30 p.m. LIVE PT) and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on-demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs).

A Timeline Of Beyoncé's GRAMMY Moments, From Her First Win With Destiny's Child to Making History With 'Renaissance'

Puerto Rican singer/songwriter Pedro Capó made good use of quarantine quiet.  

With the world shut down, Capó carefully crafted his most personal and hands-on album yet, La Neta. That introspection had significant results; while Capó has spent more than a decade  writing for himself and artists like Ricky Martin, his first GRAMMY nomination offered a special validation. 

"I make music because I love it. It's who I am. It motivates me to keep doing what I'm doing," Capó tells GRAMMY.com. "To be considered by the Recording Academy is quite the achievement. It validates my path. It lets me know that I'm on the right track. I'm 43, so it's sweeter when it happens at this point."

Capó's La Neta is nominated for Best Latin Pop Album; its title translates to "The Truth." Capó was indeed operating from a place of truth, if not purity, while creating his sixth album. When stay-at-home orders were put in place in 2020, Capó built a home studio where he wrote, co-produced, and recorded La Neta. Capó often worked with his teenage son to develop the album's aural influences.

Across its 10 tracks, Capó blended the music of his youth that he grew up listening to in New York City with the rhythms from Puerto Rico. The swaggering "Hoy Me Siento Cabrón" fuses elements of grunge with a reggaeton-influenced breakdown. In the funky "FOMO," Capó translates the anxiety from the "fear of missing out" into Spanish. 

At the heart of La Neta is the feel-good "La Fiesta." At a time when people were stuck at home facing the dark reality of mortality, Capó wanted to comfort listeners with a carpe diem anthem reminiscent of Billy Joel. 

Although Capó has had hits before — including the global smash "Calma," which won Song Of The Year at the 2019 Latin GRAMMYs — he sees this GRAMMY nomination as a sign that honesty is the best policy. Ahead of the 66th GRAMMY Awards, Pedro Capó shares the story behind his LP, why La Neta garnered GRAMMY interest, and what's next in his career.

Seventeen years into your music career, how does it feel to receive your first GRAMMY nomination?

Elated. Grateful. [La Neta] was a homemade album. A pandemic album. Made with a lot of heart and very little expectations. It was a pure moment of photographic honesty. 

I'm happy to be embraced by the people first and foremost, and to get the highest of compliments, which comes from my peers. It's the first time I get an Anglo GRAMMY nomination, so it's pretty special seeing my name alongside people like Paul Simon, who have been so influential to me in my career. It's mind blowing. 

What about your sixth album La Neta finally garnered you a GRAMMY nomination?

I think it's honesty. After we had the huge hit with "Calma," I had to go through a process that was very new to me of rediscovery. Do I chase the dragon? Do I replicate the moment? Or do I go back to the studio and do exactly what I did with "Calma," which was to have fun, be honest, and express myself in a pure way? That's what I did. 

It took me back to the New York days where I lived over there and played in bars, the sounds that I used to mess around with. I went back to that aspect of my essence and it paid off. I think the connection level relies on honesty at the end of the day. That's what we did with La Neta alongside Diego Contento and Alexa Zabala. We just had fun in there and we portrayed what was happening, part of my reality at the moment. 

You were fully hands-on with this album as a co-producer and writer. Can you describe the experience of putting this album together?

Amazing! It was the album that I enjoyed the most. That's why it carries such honesty. It's really a byproduct of my walking in life. It was done in my home studio for the first time. The pandemic made me build a home studio in my house so that I can work. 

I spoke with Diego Contento, who hadn't produced before. [He is] a Berklee graduate [and] he worked at George Noriega's studio where I used to record at. I said, "Hey bro, why don't we start messing around in the studio and painting our story?" It was a lot of fun. I'm already working on the next album. La Neta taught me about that path and I definitely want to continue to explore it in such ways. 

Pop music is a very malleable genre. How did you make it your own for this album?

[By] going back to my honesty, my influences, and the things that move me. Funnily enough too, my 18-year-old kid, Jahví, kind of became an A&R of sorts or the musical director. The direction of the album comes from my bond with him. We show each other music. 

Curiously enough, that music that he's into has early '90s alternative as an influence and that's what I used to listen to when I was his age. It made sense to me to follow that direction and reconnect with my teen self and my son who is a teenager. It kept me fresh. I'm so grateful. He's my ears to the ground. 

I grew up listening from salsa and reggae to rap and blues in the New York years — all of that stuff is definitely present there. 

The biggest song from La Neta is "La Fiesta." Why do you think that millions of people have connected with that song dealing with death? 

We all have that in common. We're all going to go there. Even if we are strong in faith and have these rooted beliefs, in reality there's uncertainty. We have all this little bit of anxiety and curiosity about the mystery of that leap. It's the most natural thing in life. 

I spoke from my perspective, while also trying to find that common denominator in the human experience. People related to that, to the reality of the human condition, and also putting it in a light way.  I think we got to have the conversation and ease up a little bit about it. The unavoidable event of our departure is but an invitation to enjoy every second that we have here on this earth. 

You've also written a lot for Ricky Martin, who has won the GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Pop Album twice. What does it mean to you now that you're up for the award? 

It's wild! I remember being 17 or 18 when his Vuelve album came out and blew my mind away. I was also a big fan of Robi Draco Rosa, who was producing a whole bunch of songs on that album. When I walked into the studio to work with Ricky, it was crazy. I'm honored. 

It goes to show — and that I will tell to young artists as well — just stick to it. The possibilities are endless. The drop hits the rock so many times that it might break. I'm happy. Grateful. 

How will you celebrate if you win your first GRAMMY Award?

[By] heading back to the studio. That night I'm sure I'll have some champagne and hug my friends and call my family and celebrate it. [I'll] be present in that moment, but get back to it. 

Music is not only my job or my hobby. It's my way of expression. It's my therapy. It's my playground.

What do you want to achieve or accomplish next?

When I achieve a goal, there's a million more that come to mind. I want to write a musical theater piece. I want to go back to acting and keep growing in that area. 

Just make good music, music that impacts the world in a positive way. The way music has saved my life has been so instrumental in my evolution. I want to pay it forward as well. My channel and my way to contribute is through music. We're going to start releasing singles soon from the new album that we expect to fully drop around August. 

2024 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Full Nominees List

Since the start of her career, four-time GRAMMY winner Lizzo has been making music that radiates positive energy. Her Record Of The Year win for "About Damn Time" at the 2023 GRAMMYs proved that being true to yourself and kind to one another always wins.

Travel back to revisit the moment Lizzo won her award in the coveted category in this episode of GRAMMY Rewind. 

"Um, huh?" Lizzo exclaimed at the start of her acceptance speech. "Let me tell you something. Me and Adele are having a good time, just enjoying ourselves and rooting for our friends. So, this is an amazing night. This is so unexpected."

Lizzo kicked off her GRAMMY acceptance speech by acknowledging Prince's influence on her sound. "When we lost Prince, I decided to dedicate my life to making positive music," she said. "This was at a time when positive music and feel-good music wasn't mainstream at that point and I felt very misunderstood. I felt on the outside looking in. But I stayed true to myself because I wanted to make the world a better place so I had to be that change."

As tracks like "Good as Hell" and "Truth Hurts" scaled the charts, she noticed more body positivity and self-love anthems from other artists. "I'm just so proud to be a part of it," she cheered.

Most importantly, Lizzo credited staying true to herself despite the pushback for her win. "I promise that you will attract people in your life who believe in you and support you," she said in front of a tearful audience that included Beyoncé and Taylor Swift in standing ovation, before giving a shout-out to her team, family, partner and producers on the record, Blake Slatkin and Ricky Reed. 

Watch the video above for Lizzo's complete acceptance speech for Record Of The Year at the 2023 GRAMMYs. Check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of GRAMMY Rewind, and be sure to tune into the 2024 GRAMMYs on Sunday, Feb. 4, airing live on the CBS Television Network (8-11:30 p.m. LIVE ET/5-8:30 p.m. LIVE PT) and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on-demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on-demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs).

10 Must-See Moments From The 2023 GRAMMYs

After a wildly successful debut and sophomore record, you'd think it was impossible for Harry Styles to top himself. Yet, his third album, Harry's House, proved to be his most prolific yet.

The critically acclaimed project first birthed Styles' record-breaking, chart-topping single, "As It Was," then landed three more top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Late Night Talking," "Music for a Sushi Restaurant" and "Matilda." The album and "As It Was" scored Styles six nominations at the 2023 GRAMMYs — and helped the star top off his massive Harry's House era with an Album Of The Year win.

In this episode of GRAMMY Rewind, revisit Styles' big moment from last year's ceremony, which was made even more special by his superfan, Reina Lafantaisie. Host Trevor Noah (who will return as emcee for the 2024 GRAMMYs) handed the mic to Lafantaisie to announce Styles as the winner, and the two shared a celebratory hug before Styles took the mic.

"I've been so, so inspired by every artist in this category," said Styles, who was up against other industry titans like Beyoncé, Adele, Lizzo and Coldplay. "On nights like tonight, it's important for us to remember that there is no such thing as 'best' in music. I don't think any of us sit in the studio, making decisions based on what will get us [an award]."

Watch the video above to see Harry Styles' complete acceptance speech alongside his collaborators Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. Check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of GRAMMY Rewind, and be sure to tune into the 2024 GRAMMYs on Sunday, Feb. 4, airing live on the CBS Television Network (8 -11:30 p.m. LIVE ET/5-8:30 p.m. LIVE PT) and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the special airs).

Here Are The Album Of The Year Nominees At The 2024 GRAMMYs