After being nominated twice in 2020, Brittany Howard is up for five more Grammys at the 2021 ceremony. The Alabama Shakes frontwoman’s nominations this time around include Best Alternative Music Album for her debut solo album, Jaime, and Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance for her song “Stay High.”

Speaking with ABC Audio before the nominations were announced, Howard reflected on Jaime over a year after its release in September 2019, commenting that the record “hits different” now due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“‘Stay High’ is more appropriate than ever,” Howard said. “How do you stay positive during a time where you can’t really touch your loved ones or go see them, hop on a plane or do whatever you wanna do, go meet ’em at a bar?”

“A lot of these songs became super relevant,” she added.

Howard also lamented that the pandemic cut off her touring plans in support of Jaime.  “It’s weird with this record that I put out because I didn’t really get to do my full tour backing it,” she said.

We’re guessing, though, that a batch Grammy nominations will help.  Meanwhile, Howard is prepping an upcoming album collecting remixes of the songs off Jaime.

“It was just a fun idea,” Howard said of the project.  “Like, ‘Well, I got all these stems sitting around, might as well just get some other creative brains on it and see if they just wanna mix up these songs and just do what they do on it.’ It just was a fun idea. It’s just something to do in the meantime, really.” 

Howard is also nominated in the Best R&B Performance and Best American Roots Performance categories for the Jaime songs “Goat Head” and “Short and Sweet,” respectively.

By Josh Johnson
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.