Thank me later: Grammy nominations don't reflect big year for Canadians

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Drake performs at the 39th Annual American Music Awards on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 in Los Angeles. This past year was one of the best in recent memory for chart-storming Canadian artists, yet you wouldn't know it from tuning in to this weekend's Grammy Awards. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Matt Sayles

TORONTO - This past year was one of the best in recent memory for chart-storming Canadian artists, yet you wouldn't know it tuning in to this weekend's Grammy Awards.

But there's no need to raise those patriotic pitchforks. While there was a point in December in which four of the top five slots on the U.S. Billboard charts were occupied by Canadian artists, most of music's most Grammy-worthy Canucks were simply fashionably late in 2011.

The eligibility period for this year's awards — to be broadcast Sunday from L.A.'s Staples Center on Global and CBS — ran from Sept. 1, 2010 to Sept. 30, 2011.

Chief among the Grammy shoo-ins who didn't make the cut? Drake, whose innovative slow burn of a sophomore record "Take Care" topped critics' polls around North America, earning praise for its flickering, ennui-steeped R&B/hip-hop hybrid. The album opened at No. 1 in the U.S. en route to platinum sales.

The fact that the 25-year-old from Toronto reeled in three nominations anyway — for collaborations with Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and DJ Khaled — suggests that the Recording Academy really, really likes him. But when it comes to "Take Care," he'll have to wait for the Grammys to thank him later.

Michael Buble has a similarly solid track record with the Grammys, having won three trophies over the years. But while his charmingly retro holiday disc "Christmas" filled more stockings than the Rockettes last year, it came out in October and just missed Grammy consideration.

While it's tough to tell whether 17-year-old teen-pop sensation Justin Bieber would have been nominated for his own featherweight holiday collection, "Under the Mistletoe" (the Stratford, Ont., native IS a two-time nominee, after all), he also missed the eligibility period by a little over a month.

Ditto divisive hard-rockers Nickelback. Say what you will about the midtempo, midbrow sludge-slingers, they've been nominated for six Grammys in the past. But "Here and Now" came out in November, when it was "Here and Late" in Grammy terms.

And Feist's "Metals" was the closest of all, hitting stores on Oct. 4 in the U.S. and Canada. While the contemplative disc lacks the immediate pop splendour of predecessor "The Reminder" — which earned the Toronto-based songwriter four Grammy nominations in 2008 — the record was praised widely for its inventive instrumentation and sturdy songcraft.

But like many of her high-profile compatriots, Feist will just have to wait until next year to find out if "Metals" is worthy of Grammy attention.

However, it might not be a bad thing that the Canucks will mostly be on the outside looking in this year (in addition to Drake, multiple nominees include megapopular producer Deadmau5 and Toronto R&B crooner Melanie Fiona).

At least this way they don't have to compete with Adele.

The British crooner with the almighty pipes is expected to win pretty much everything in sight on Grammy night. It's not just that her anguished sophomore record, "21," sold more copies than Kinko's in a year-long residency near the top of the charts.

But Adele also would seem to occupy the Grammy voter sweet spot. She's young enough that the hip set can hum any of her ubiquitous melodies, but with a retro neo-soul style and handsomely understated production that appeals to older voters.

With two Grammy wins for her far less successful debut album already, Adele will need to clear significant mantel space for this haul.

It helps that she doesn't have much true competition in the big three categories — album, record and song of the year (the difference between the latter two, by the way, is that record rewards performance while song rewards songwriting).

Lady Gaga made history with her third consecutive nomination for album of the year, but "Born This Way" was arguably the worst of her three releases, with a lead single that aped Madonna and first-week sales juiced by an aggressive Amazon promotion. Bruno Mars and Rihanna are both Academy favourites but are likely to win smaller genre awards, the same way Foo Fighters will likely clean up in the rock categories.

The race for best new artist is less predictable. Dubstep producer Skrillex nabbed headlines with his surprising five nominations, but he likely doesn't have the name recognition to win this award, and the same holds true for fledgling rapper J. Cole and country trio the Band Perry.

This category will likely come down to electrifying rapper Nicki Minaj and beloved indie-folk outfit Bon Iver. Minaj's platinum-selling debut "Pink Friday" received mixed reviews but the colourful oddball has received plaudits for her dextrous skills on mixtapes and other artist's singles. Still, the smart money is probably on Bon Iver, whose sterling critical reputation and nominations in all three of the Grammys' major categories should result in at least a couple big wins.

Another fascinating angle to the show will lie in the audience's reaction to Chris Brown. The multi-nominated 22-year-old almost saw his career come to a sudden end the night of the 2009 Grammys, when Brown turned himself in to police after assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna at a party. He's serving five years of probation for the felony attack.

While his career has recovered — his 2011 release "F.A.M.E." hit No. 1 on the U.S. charts en route to gold certification — it will be interesting to see how warmly he's received by his industry peers.

And if we're talking award-show surprises, it's always worth mentioning Kanye West.

Though he leads the field with seven nominations, fans were justifiably upset that his ambitious masterpiece "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" wasn't rewarded with an album of the year nod — even if a newly chastened West was uncharacteristically gracious in shrugging off the perceived snub.

The 14-time Grammy winner has been conspicuously absent from recent Grammy telecasts, probably owing in part to past awards-show misdeeds — most prominently the time he rudely interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Awards. He hasn't won an award for his own material since 2008.

Nothing else in the rap categories has the critical clout of West's opus — the most prominent competitor is actually "Watch the Throne," the record West put out with frequent collaborator Jay-Z. So his success, or lack thereof, could go a long way toward determining whether Grammy voters have accepted any of his myriad mea culpas since the Swift incident.

If not, West will be in the same position as the biggest artists Canada has to offer — fantasizing about next year.