Who is the best-selling artist who has never won a Grammy?
For many musicians, winning a Grammy is an honour of the highest order.
When you look across history at all the musical legends who have received one of the coveted awards, it makes sense as to why it still holds its prestige. After all, countless major names, from Michael Jackson to Paul Simon, have taken home one of those sought-after, gold-plated gramophones, making its position in musical history and the present landscape clear.
Granted, with ceremonies as major as the Grammys, there’s always the opposite debate about whether it actually holds as much weight as it used to, as well as all those moments when people have used the stage either to embarrass themselves or the board itself. But for the most part, it remains one of the most respected events in the business.
However, as we know, not all success is marked by whether someone has a Grammy, and, in fact, many legendary musicians, past and present, have never actually won one for themselves – the reason why differs, but mainly, it also points towards a bigger, harsher truth about cultural impact and how some people simply slip through the cracks.
For instance, some of the names who have never won a Grammy might be surprising, with the list including legendary stars like Queen, the Beach Boys, the Cars, Jimi Hendrix, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, The Cure, Oasis, Depeche Mode, ABBA, Björk, The Kinks, The Who, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Iggy Pop, Diana Ross, Guns N’ Roses, and more.
Which best-selling artists have never won a Grammy?
Many of those also mark some of our most commercially successful and best-selling artists in history, like Queen, who have sold over 300 million records worldwide, and ABBA, with upwards of 400m record sales worldwide – others have notable successes in other ways, like Janis Joplin, who is broadly considered to be one of the most pioneering musical artists of her time.
Because of estimations, it’s difficult to pinpoint which of those has sold the most records, with the battle between Queen and ABBA coming out as the closest for the top spot, and this is especially surprising when you consider how monolithic both of those entities remain to this day, and yet, neither of them ever managed to bag one of the golden medals for themselves.
Still, this is part of a broader disparity when it comes to award ceremonies at large: not every legend will be recognised as much as they deserve to be, and for whatever reason, it’s often those who have garnered the most popularity or made a bigger goddamn impact than many of their peers who barely get the recognition in real-time.
The reason is unclear, though perhaps it mainly comes down to unfortunate timing, or that most legends simply become legends because they exist outside of the realm of obvious success, hooking their claws into the deeper threads of culture without needing the validity of any real, tangible recognition.
