Jon Batiste being on TV nightly as The Late Show bandleader may have given him the edge to win this year's top Grammy award

The Atlantic

Batiste surprisingly won Album of the Year on Sunday night with his album We Are -- surprising because it wasn't tipped to win after peaking at No. 86 on the Billboard 200. So why did he win? According to Spencer Kornhaber, "the jazz pianist was a traditionalist choice to win Album of the Year—but a traditionalist choice for an evolving institution." Batiste being on TV also helped, says Kornhaber. "To understand why so many Academy members judged the 35-year-old Batiste’s album to be year-defining, consider his career," says Kornhaber "As the bandleader on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, he has been on television, night after night, since 2015—which means he is one of the most visible working musicians in America. Other widely consumed projects, such as his soundtrack for the Pixar film Soul, have built him the kind of renown that is less explosive than that of a pop phenom, but is still significant and pervasive. The songs of We Are—vivid, exploratory pop soul—are musically impressive, broadly accessible, and rich with social consciousness. His colorful, go-for-broke Grammys performance of his single 'Freedom' demonstrated the showmanship of someone who welcomes a cross-generational, cross-genre audience—someone easy to like, and impossible to root against."