Leading up to the Grammy nominations on Nov. 8, Rolling Stone is breaking down 13 different categories. For each, we’re predicting the nominees, as well as who will (and who should) win on Grammy night.
It took the Grammys until 1995 to carve out a separate award for Best Rock Album, and they royally screwed it up that year by handing it to the Rolling Stones for Voodoo Lounge over Pearl Jam‘s Vs., R.E.M.’s Monster, Soundgarden’s Superunknown, and Neil Young’s Sleeps With Angels. In the years that followed, they sometimes got it very right (Green Day‘s American Idiot, U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising), but often got it very, very wrong (The Strokes’ The New Abnormal, Muse’s Drones, and no less than five Foo Fighters albums). It’s a competitive race this year with LPs by Green Day, Pearl Jam, Blink-182, the Rolling Stones, and even Dolly Parton.
Best Rock Album – Our Predictions
Blink-182, One More Time
Green Day, Saviors
Dolly Parton, Rockstar
Pearl Jam, Dark Matter
The Rolling Stones, Hackney Diamonds
Who Will Win?
The Rolling Stones
It’s the tiredest of tired rock critic clichés to say the Rolling Stones have made their best record since 1981’s Tattoo You, but there’s an actual argument that they actually pulled it off with Hackney Diamonds. Expectations were low since they hadn’t released an album of original songs since 2005’s A Bigger Bang, they’re all in their 80s now, and drummer Charlie Watts died in 2021. But working closely with producer Andrew Watt over the course of just a few weeks, they hammered out a series of excellent songs like “Angry,” “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” and “Bite My Head Off” that fit seamlessly into the set lists of their summer stadium tour. “Andrew Watt has the magic touch,” says Jason Squires, program director of KFRR in Fresno, California. “And you don’t count these guys out ever, ever, ever.”
Who Should Win?
The Rolling Stones
Pearl Jam, Blink-182, and Green Day all released stellar albums, but none stood miles above their best work of the 2000s. Mick, Keith, and the band, meanwhile, haven’t even attempted a record of new songs since the uneven A Bigger Bang. Most fans presumed they’d never get around to it. And nobody expected anything even remotely on the level of Hackney Diamonds. The album is an absolute miracle and the Stones richly deserve another Grammy: the band has been awarded a scant three Grammys across their six-decade career. “I really think it’s going to the Stones this year,” says SiriusXM DJ Justin Kade. “It’s kind of how you give someone an MVP or lifetime achievement award.”
Forecasting the Field
Kade says Billie Joe Armstrong and co. are the ones to watch in this race — and deserving. “Give Green Day their flowers,” he says. “They’re intelligent, funny, crazy…the whole package. They always deliver. They are the saviors of rock.” But Squire won’t rule out Blink-182, whose reunion tour was a massive success. “They could have just done the reunion and played shows, but they really put some effort into this,” he says of One More Time. “It really reconnected them with their fans.” Pearl Jam are also making some of their best work, joining superfan Andrew Watt in the studio just days after the producer finished the Stones’ Hackney Diamonds. It’s a classic PJ record highlighted by the anthemic “Scared of Fear,” the frenetic “Running,” and the mellow “Setting Sun.” “Pearl Jam are survivors,” Kade says. But neither he nor Squire think country legend Dolly Parton — inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022 — will break on through. Her all-star collabs album Rockstar just wasn’t raw enough. Says Squires, “It was a little too puffed up for me overall.”
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