This year, three studio pros each have three Grammy nominations in a flagship category: Record or Album of the Year.

Manny Marroquin has three albums of the year as an engineer / mixer on Jon Batiste We are, SHE In the back of my mind and Lil Nas X’s Montero.

Serban Ghenea and John Hanes each have three records of the year as engineer / mixers on “Montero (Call Me by Your Name) by Lil Nas X”, “Leave the Door Open” by Silk Sonic and the Doja Cat collaboration / SZA “Kiss Me Suite.”

Remarkably, this is the second time that Ghenea and Hanes have three record-of-the-year nominations in a year. And the last time they did, in 2015, there were only five nominees in the category. (There are 10 this year.) Ghenea and Hanes were nominated that year as engineers / mixers on the Mark Ronson / Bruno Mars collaboration “Uptown Funk!” (who won), “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift and “Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd.

In recent years, we have seen several instances where studio professionals received three nominations in marquee categories in the same year. This has become easier to accomplish since 2018, when the number of nominees in each of the major categories (Album, Record and Song of the Year, plus Best New Artist) increased from five to eight. The number has dropped from eight to ten this year. But note that several of these cases predate the expansion in 2015.

Working backwards, here are some examples of people with three nominations for record or album of the year in the same year. (No songwriter has ever had three song of the year nominations in one year.)

2020: Emily Lazar received three album of the year nominations as Coldplay’s sole mastering engineer Daily life and HAIM Women in Music Pt. III and one of Jacob Collier’s two master’s engineers Djesse Vol. 3. (She teamed up with Chris Allgood on Collier’s album.) Note: There were eight nominees in the category.

2018: Mike Bozzi received three record-of-the-year nominations as the sole mastering engineer of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” ​​(which won), Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s “All the Stars” and Post Malone / 21 Savage “Rockstar” collaboration. Note: There were eight nominees in the category.

2015 : Tom Coyne received three nominations for the record of the year as the only mastering engineer in the Mark Ronson / Bruno Mars collaboration “Uptown Funk!” (who won), “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift and “Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd. Note: These are the same three discs that Ghenea and Hanes were credited with as Engineers / Mixers as shown above. There were only five nominees in the category. Coyne died in April 2017 at the age of 62.

2014 : Andrew Coleman received three nominations for Album of the Year as Engineer / Mixer from Beyoncé Beyonce, Ed Sheeran X and Pharrell Williams GIRL.

2006: Rick Rubin received three nominations for Album of the Year as the sole producer of Dixie Chicks’ Take the long way and red peppers Arcadium stadium and as one of the five producers of Justin Timberlake FutureSex / LoveSounds. (His co-producers on this last album were Timberlake, Nate (Danja) Hills, Jawbreakers and Timbaland.)

Producers have received nominations for their contributions to the Album and Record of the Year nominees since 1965 – the eighth year of the Grammy Awards. Engineers / Mixers and Mastering Engineers have been added to the ranks of nominees more recently. Engineers / Mixers became eligible for the Album and Recording of the Year in 1998. Mastering Engineers became eligible for the album in 2001 and for recording in 2012.

The first producers to win the year’s record were A&M Records co-founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, who co-produced the elegant instrumental “A Taste of Honey” by Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass. The first producer to win the Album of the Year award was Sonny Burke, who produced Frank Sinatra’s Reflective September of my years.

The first engineers / mixers to win the record for the year were Simon Franglen, Humberto Gatica and David Gleeson, who worked on the mega-bit from Celine Dion’s film “My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme From Titanic)”. The first engineers / mixers to win for Album of the Year were Commissioner Gordon, Matt Howe, Storm Jefferson, Ken Johnston, Tony Prendatt, Warren Riker, Chris Theis and Johnny Wydrycz, who worked on Lauryn Hill’s Lauryn Hill’s poor education, the first hip-hop album to win Album of the Year.

The first mastering engineer to win the record of the year was William Bowden, who did the honors on Gotye with Kimbra’s original alt-pop smash “Somebody That I Used to Know”. The first mastering engineer to win Album of the Year was Gavin Lurssen, who worked on the O brother, where are you? soundtrack, a rare bluegrass blockbuster.