Courtney Barnett has discussed her feelings about being nominated for this year’s Grammy awards.
The Australian singer-songwriter is up for the Best New Artist award, alongside the likes of James Bay and Meghan Trainor.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Barnett described the nomination as “surreal”.
“It’s a surreal scene, you know, growing up in Australia and being so distant from that sort of thing,” she said. “But yeah, it means a kind of recognition for all this hard work we’ve been doing, I guess. It kind of feels nice because of the type of music I play, and where I’ve come from, like putting out my own records, running my record label from my house still in Australia. And to be touring around and to then be, suddenly, on this level of recognition, on the other side of the world, feels really nice.”
Asked what she thought her chances were of winning the award, she responded: “Um, about one in five?”
PressBarnett recently revealed she hadn’t heard of the other nominees in her category, which as well as Bay and Trainor include Sam Hunt and Tori Kelly.
“I probably won’t [check them out],” she told Billboard. “I listen to music when my friends recommend it to me, I don’t often just go out and buy a record because it was in a magazine or it was on a list or something. So, yeah, I probably won’t. I feel like there’s so much music in the world that I haven’t listened to yet that I want to listen to.”
“You just live in your own little bubble, like, or I do anyway… I don’t know much about anything really. I don’t really follow that much. I’ve found a couple of albums or artists I like, but really I just do my own thing – I’m not so concerned about what everyone else is doing and what the trend is.”
Barnett continued to state that while she is surprised and flattered to be nominated, award shows are not necessarily the top of her wish list.
“I’m sure there are millions of other artists that I respect that have won Grammys, maybe. I don’t know, I’ve never followed the Grammys, I don’t know. But it’s just nice to have that recognition on such a huge international scale.”
Asked who she thinks is deserving of a Grammy nomination, Barnett added: “I don’t even know what new artist means. We did some shows with Sharon Van Etten last year, and I love her, and Benjamin Booker as well, last year. But I don’t know, there’s so many. I’ve been listening to Sleater-Kinney and, like, it’s new to me but they’re obviously not a new band.”
The 58th Grammy Awards takes place on February 15.