Frankie Valli, Chicago, Led Zeppelin & More Artists Who Lost the Grammy for Best New Artist But Later Won Lifetime Achievement Award: Full List
Here’s some advice for Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims and this year’s four other Grammy nominees for best new artist. If your name isn’t called as the winner in that category when the 67nd annual Grammy Awards are presented on Feb. 2, don’t lose heart. You can still go on to a significant recording career. Look no further than Frankie Valli, who, as part of the Four Seasons, lost the Grammy for best new artist in 1963 to Robert Goulet, but today (Dec. 20) was announced as a lifetime achievement award recipient by the Recording Academy.
If you’re under 60 or so, you probably don’t know much about Goulet, who died in 2007. He was a major Broadway, TV and recording star in the 1960s, who rose to fame by playing Lancelot in Camelot on Broadway from 1960 to 1963. The Four Seasons had a very different kind of fame, as a pop vocal group with three consecutive (discounting a holiday single) No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962-63 – “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man.”
That was Goulet’s only Grammy nomination that year (or ever), whereas the Four Seasons had two that year – best new artist and best rock & roll recording for “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” So how did Goulet win? The biggest reason is Camelot, which had spawned a Billboard 200-topping original cast album in 1961. In that show, he had the good fortune to sing one of the greatest ballads of the era, “If Ever I Would Leave You.” That instant standard was more in line with Grammy tastes at the time than the Four Seasons’ more youth-oriented smashes.
Here’s a complete list of artists who lost the best new artist Grammy but later received lifetime achievement awards from the Recording Academy.
Paul Grein
Billboard