Congratulations to this year's Grammy winner for Best New Artist, Meghan Trainor… maybe. Will the singer of "All About That Bass" (and probably other songs) go on to become a superstar like Mariah Carey, Adele, or the Beatles? They all won the award. Or will Trainor be totally forgotten, like so many other Best New Artist winners from history? Check an updated version of this list 10 years from now to find out.
1. Esperanza Spalding (2011)
Perhaps the most surprising and obscure Best New Artist winner, her win in 2011 made people go insane on the Internet. Probably because Spalding is a jazz bassist, and she beat acts like Drake, Mumford and Sons, and Justin Bieber. (Beliebers even vandalized her Wikipedia page.) Still, the exposure did her a lot of good. Spalding's 2012 album Radio Music Society reached the top 10 on the album chart and sold 114,000 copies, which is about 113,999 more than most jazz albums. And she won three more Grammys, so she probably doesn't care if you've never heard of her.
2. Shelby Lynne (2001)
By the time Lynne won Best New Artist (in a weak year—the competition included Papa Roach and Sisqo), she'd already released five country music albums over the previous 12 years. She won the Grammy after the release of her first rock album. Subsequently, while Lynne has a cult following, she's never had a hit album or single. But she did play Carrie Cash in Walk the Line.
3. Paula Cole (1998)
Paula Cole is late 90s nostalgia personified: she's best known for touring with Lilith Fair, and for performing "I Don't Want to Wait," the Dawson's Creek theme song. Cole has an amazing voice, and she won the Grammy over Hanson and Puff Daddy. Her last two albums have been released on 675 Records, a label she started, and she currently teaches singing at the prestigious Berklee College of Music.
4. Marc Cohn (1992)
Cohn seems like the kind of singer that wins a lot of Grammys: a soulful white dude behind a piano singing about great American music. Nevertheless, "Walking in Memphis" was a big hit and a great song…and Cohn's only hit. But he made the news in 2005 when he was shot in the head during a failed carjacking. Cohn lived, and was out of the hospital in less than a day. Who knew Marc Cohn was such a badass?
5. A Taste of Honey (1979)
After winning Best New Artist over Elvis Costello and the Cars on the strength of their only hit, the disco song "Boogie Oogie Oogie," the group did an English-language cover of the Japanese pop song "Sukiyaki." In 1982, they broke up.
6. Debby Boone (1978)
Debby Boone is a one-hit wonder, but it was a pretty big hit. The daughter of Pat Boone, the squarest square who ever squared, Boone sang the theme song to the forgotten 1977 movie You Light Up My Life, and it spent 10 weeks at #1, a record at the time. In the movie, the song was presented romantically, but Boone claimed that when she sang it, she sang it about God. So while she never had another pop hit, she's had tons in the country and Christian music genres.
7. Starland Vocal Band (1977)
"Afternoon Delight," the only hit by the Starland Vocal Band, sounds cheesy, but upon further listening, it's gross! Also, your parents have definitely had sex to it. It's about boning in the afternoon. A few months after the Best New Artist win, this four-part vocal group hosted a short-lived TV variety show, and broke up in 1981. In 1998 the members reunited, and recruited their kids. So now they play county fairs and the like, singing with their own children about having sex in the afternoon.
8. José Feliciano (1969)
A Latin and jazz guitar virtuoso (and yeah, he was blind), his cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire" sold a million copies, and it basically won him the Best New Artist Grammy. But later that year, his career was derailed because he played "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the World Series in his distinctive style, all slow and soulful, which angered people for some reason. A year later, he released the song that still pays his bills, the Christmas pop standard "Feliz Navidad." But he beats every other obscure Best New Artist winner because he's the only one who had a cameo in Fargo.
9. The Swingle Singers (1964)
In 1964, just a few days after the Beatles played on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and changed the landscape of American music overnight, the Grammys honoring the music of 1963 took place, showing everyone what the Beatles would blow out of the water. Best New Artist: the Swingle Singers, a European novelty act that took classical music pieces and performed them a capella, but with scatting and jazz elements. (Their first album was actually titled Jazz Sebastian Bach.) They never had a hit single or album, and the original group disbanded in 1973.