Grammy winners and nominees on 60 Minutes through the years
Beyoncé, who is the most-nominated artist in Grammy Awards history, once told 60 Minutes she was fortunate to have had gradual success.
That gradual success has turned into a massive career, with 11 nominations this year for "Cowboy Carter" and 99 total nominations across her years in the music industry. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga Eminem, Chris Stapleton and, most recently, Samara Joy, are among the singers who've sat down with 60 Minutes over the years.
Here are highlights from their interviews ahead of the Feb. 2 Grammys, hosted this year by comedian Trevor Noah.
Beyoncé
Beyoncé's career began in grade school. She was raised in an upscale Houston neighborhood by her father Matthew, a sales executive who later became his daughter's manager, and her mother Tina. Beyoncé's mother owned one of the most popular hair salons in Houston, which became one of Beyoncé's first venues. The singer started performing when she was 9.
"That's when I started performing at Walmarts and, you know, wherever we could perform," she told Steve Kroft in 2010. "We didn't become professional until we got a record deal around 12 years old."
Beyoncé is one of five artists nominated this year in all three of the Grammys' top general categories: record of the year, song of the year and album of the year.
Taylor Swift
Beyoncé is joined on the list by Taylor Swift, nominated this year for her album "The Tortured Poets Department," along with nominations in several other categories. Swift, now 35, invited 60 Minutes into her home when she was just 21. At the time she said she felt like an outsider.
"I could be sitting at the front row at an award show and I still don't feel like a cool kid," Swift said in an unaired excerpt from the 2011 interview.
The 60 Minutes Swift profile came just after the singer released her third album, "Speak Now." In audio aired for the first time during an episode of the "60 Minutes: A Second Look" podcast, Swift revealed some insecurity.
"Sometimes I get really overwhelmed when I think about, like, 10 years from now I'll be 30, like, what's the sound then? What, OK, what am I doing then? What are the choices I've made at that point? Oh my God, what does my life look like?" she said in 2011.
For Swift, it looks like 14 Grammy wins and 58 nominations.
Paul McCartney
The Beatles scored a surprise Grammy nomination for record of the year with "Now and Then," which used artificial intelligence to meld old and new music. Member Paul McCartney in 2018 sat down with 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi to share rare details from the Beatles years and his subsequent decades as one of the most successful musicians in popular music history.
The "Now and Then" release features the voices of all four original Beatles performers, with surviving members McCartney and Ringo Starr working with what was initially an old demo recording by John Lennon.
During his 60 Minutes interview, McCartney remembered being competitive with Lennon.
"Not openly, but we later admitted, 'Yeah, you know, so Paul's written a good one there, I better get going.' And I would similarly, 'Hmm, that's a bit good, right, here we go, come on,'" McCartney said. "He'd have written 'Strawberry Fields,' I would write 'Penny Lane.' You know, and it's, he's remembering his old area in Liverpool, so I'll remember mine."
Alfonsi also asked McCartney if he'd ever say: "I'm good, I did it all."
"I would like to think I could do that," McCartney said in 2018. "But I think it would be boring and I think I'd sort of give up trying. And I quite like that I don't think I've done good enough yet."
Eminem
Eminem, nominated for best rap album for "The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)," proved to 60 Minutes that there are words that rhyme with orange.
"It`s just in the enunciation of it. Like, people say that the word, orange, doesn`t rhyme with anything and that kind of pisses me off because I can think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange," he told Anderson Cooper in 2010.
Eminem said he would think about rhyming words throughout the day, actually driving himself "insane with it." He's someone who reads the dictionary.
"I want to be able to have all of these words at my disposal, in my vocabulary at all times, whenever I need to pull them out," Eminem said. "You know, somewhere, they`ll be stored, like, locked away in my mind."
Chris Stapleton
Chris Stapleton, nominated for best country album for "Higher," talked about his roots and songwriting in a 60 Minutes interview in 2022. Wife and bandmate Morgane Stapleton also sat down with Sharyn Alfonsi.
Stapleton showed 60 Minutes around his rehearsal space in Nashville, filled with artifacts and awards, including his Grammys. The walls are lined with instruments and gear Stapleton collects obsessively.
The singer's original plan was to be an engineer, like his dad. At the time, Stapleton said he didn't even know being a songwriter was an option.
"And then, you know, I met somebody who was a songwriter. And then it was just like, 'that's a job? They're gonna pay you to sit in a room and make things up on guitar?' That's the — I need that job. That's the job I want."
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga, nominated this year for song of the year and best pop duo/group performance for her work on "Die With a Smile," discussed her career and her approach to performing with 60 Minutes in 2011. She took Anderson Cooper to the building in New York she lived in before hitting it big.
"We're going to do it the New York way," she said, hitting all the buzzers to get in.
Cooper said when people heard he was interviewing Gaga, everyone asked him what she was really like.
"Photographers say this to me all the — 'I want to photograph the real you.' I'm, like, 'What the hell are you looking for? I'm right here.' You've seen me with no makeup," she said. "You've asked me about my drug history, my parents, my bank account. I mean, how much more real could I be?"
Samara Joy
Jazz vocalist Samara Joy has won three Grammys and is up for two more this year, but she told 60 Minutes last year that when she auditioned for the jazz studies program in college, she knew just one jazz song.
Joy is nominated this year for jazz vocal album for "A Joyful Holiday" and best jazz performance for "Twinkle Twinkle Little Me."
Her Grammys, including the one for best new artist, are with her parents.
"Music is part of my family," Joy told 60 Minutes last year. "It's an integral part of how we express ourselves and share, you know, love for each other."
Rolling Stones
Rolling Stones frontman and lead singer Mick Jagger in 1994 spoke with 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley. Jagger has been nominated for 19 Grammys over the years and has won three, and the Rolling Stones were presented with the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in 1986.
Jagger was 80 when "Hackney Diamonds" was released. It's nominated this year for best rock album. His longevity in the industry comes despite a reputation for excess and living on the edge early in his career.
"I did it for a very long time, and then you come to a point where [you] go, 'Well, I did it. Now I think I'll sort of watch it,' because I prefer to be able to do what I do for longer," he said in a 1994 interview with 60 Minutes. "It's very dull being — you know, you think that you're having a good time, but you're really just a slave to something."
Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer has four Grammy awards for his work on action, drama, comedy, romance and blockbuster films. Zimmer told 60 Minutes in 2023 that after more than 150 films, he lives in constant fear of the day his phone will stop ringing.
"You know, I'm still alive. You know, I'm 65 years old now and people are going, "Are you gonna retire? You gonna go and put your feet up?" And I'm going, "No, I'm full of ideas. I'm just getting started."
Zimmer, now 67, is nominated this year for his work on "Dune: Part Two."
