Best New Artist is subject to mockery because the nominees are usually established artists by the time they are nominated for Best New Artist. Olivia Rodrigo won the award in 2022 after her record-breaking 2021 entrance with “Drivers License” and Sour.
Rodrigo presented the Best New Artist category at the 2023 Grammys last night, February 5, and in a refreshing turn of events, it was likely the first time most of the audience had heard the name Samara Joy.
Joy, 23, claimed the title over more mainstream nominees Anitta, Domi & JD Beck, Latto, Måneskin, Molly Tuttle, Muni Long, Omar Apollo, Tobe Nwigwe, and Wet Leg. The New York jazz singer also won Best Jazz Vocal Album for Linger Awhile.
Joy has been in the spotlight before now, though. She performed “Nostalgia (The Day I Knew)” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and “Warm In December” on The Kelly Clarkson Show in December. She also recently graced Spotify’s Best New Artist event.
As relayed by The Los Angeles Times, “Joy grew up the granddaughter of Elder Goldwire and Ruth McLendon, who performed with a Philadelphia gospel group, the Savettes. Yet as a kid Joy also sang in school musicals and absorbed the soul and R&B music of Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan. In 2019, while studying at the State University of New York at Purchase, she won the prestigious Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition.”
Joy paid homage to her musical influences during her endearing Best New Artist acceptance speech.
“I am so, so — oh my gosh, I can’t even believe. I’ve been watching y’all on TV for so long,” she said. “To be here with you all, born and raised in the Bronx, New York, my family is here. I’ve been singing all my life.”
She continued, “Thank you so much for this honor. Thank you to everyone who has listened to me, who has supported me. All of you are so inspiring to me, and so to be here because of who I am — all of you have inspired me because of who you are. You express yourself exactly who you are, authentically, so to be here by just being myself, by just being who I was born as, I’m so thankful.”
Watch below.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.