Post Malone Is Likely to Match a Grammy Feat Accomplished by Just 3 Artists in 62 Years

Posty would be easily the youngest artist in Grammy history to land record of the year nods three years running.

Post Malone's "Circles" has been a fixture in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 since it debuted in September -- for 31 consecutive weeks. As my colleague Gary Trust pointed out Monday (April 6), it's just two weeks away from tying the all-time record for most weeks in the top 10. Beyond its commercial success, the shimmering smash is widely regarded as one of the year's best singles. It seems increasingly likely that it will wind up with a Grammy nomination for record of the year.

This would be the third consecutive year that Posty has been nominated in that marquee category. He was nominated two years ago for "Rockstar," featuring 21 Savage. He was nominated this past year for "Sunflower," his collab with Swae Lee.

Post would be the first artist to land a record of the year nomination three years running since Steve Winwood accomplished the feat every year from 1986-88. The Englishman won the 1986 award for "Higher Love" (with a backing vocal by Chaka Khan) and was nominated again the next two years with "Back in the High Life Again" (backing vocal by James Taylor) and "Roll With It."

In all of Grammy history, only two other artists have received record of the year nominations three years in a row.

Roberta Flack won in the category with two all-time classics, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (1972) and "Killing Me Softly with His Song" (1973), and was nominated with the silky "Feel like Makin' Love" (1974).

Frank Sinatra was nominated for "Witchcraft" (1958), "High Hopes" (1959), "Nice 'N' Easy" (1960) and "The Second Time Around" (1961). (That run makes him the only artist in Grammy history with record of the year nods in four consecutive years.) The legendary singer didn't win for any of those singles; he finally took home the prize for the sumptuous "Strangers in the Night" (1966).

Post Malone would be easily the youngest artist in Grammy history to land record of the year nods three years running. Posty will be will be 25 when this year's Grammy nominations are announced later this year. Winwood was 40 when he received his third record of the year nod in a row. Flack was 37. Sinatra was 45.

"Circles" ranked No. 7 on Billboard's list of the 100 best songs of 2019, where senior editor Andrew Unterberger praised "its bouncy, melancholy melody, its gentle acoustic groove and its compulsory singalong chorus."

Unterberger further ruminated that the song "feels like the culmination of something: his slow evolution from rap star to pop star, perhaps, or maybe more just his shedding of the trappings of any specific genre or era in favor of undeniable songwriting that could work, with a couple tweaks, in just about any format at any time."

"Circles" was released on Aug. 30, 2019, so you may be wondering if it's eligible. (This year's eligibility period began on Sept. 1, 2019.) It is. According to the Recording Academy, singles are eligible for record of the year if they were released in the current or previous eligibility year, assuming they meet two conditions: They must not have been entered into the Grammy process previously and they must not have appeared on an album that won a Grammy. (Got all that?!) "Circles" meets both conditions.

Will Posty join a high-powered Grammy foursome with Winwood, Flack and Sinatra? We'll find out when the 63rd annual Grammy nominations are announced later this year. (The Recording Academy hasn't announced the exact date, but it will be sometime around Nov. 20, the date of last year's announcements.)