Creator

Sometimes an album cover could be worth a thousand words. And the Grammys finally agree.

The 2026 ceremony will be the first time in 53 years that the award for best album cover will be presented. Previously, the award for a recording package included the album’s visuals and physical materials. Last year, Charli XCX earned the accolade for the virality of “brat” and its distinct mucus-y green.

However, this year, the categories for boxed/special limited-edition packages will be combined into a single recording package category, with album covers receiving their own trophy.

This category isn’t exactly new. At the first Grammys in 1959, Frank Sinatra’s “Only the Lonely” received the award for album cover. It was presented every year until 1973, when the Siegel-Schwall Band won for its self-titled album. After that, the category was renamed album package and then changed again in 1994 to recording package.

The nominated albums for art cover include Tyler the Creator’s “Chromakopia,” Djo’s “The Crux,” Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” Perfume Genius’ “Glory” and Wet Leg’s “Moisturizer.” From the nostalgic white plastic chairs that grace Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album to Tyler the Creator’s masked longing gaze on his cover, an album’s artwork is often essential to the listening experience.

“When a cover in a campaign hits right,” said nominated photographer Neil Krug to the Associated Press, “it’s part of the language and the fabric of what makes a great record a great record.”

Krug has a history of photographing covers for artists like Lana Del Rey and Tame Impala. He’s nominated for shooting the cover of “The Crux, ” by Joe Keery (“Stranger Things”), who goes by the musical moniker Djo. The image includes a chaotic menagerie of an old hotel and a crowded street, including everything from Djo himself hanging from a window, a kissing couple and a parking ticket dispute.

“Anything that we could come up with, we were just like throwing it at the canvas,” Krug told the Associated Press.

This split of categories is meant to better recognize music in the digital age. Grammy rules state that albums do not need to exist physically to be considered for this category, unlike in the recording package category. (Though this year every album nominated for the award is available on vinyl and CD).

“In today’s digital world, album covers are arguably more impactful than ever. Chances are, there’s an iconic cover that’s instantly recognizable to you, even if you never owned the physical album. Their cultural significance is undeniable,” said Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., in an interview with Grammy.com.

Recording Academy voters are tasked with judging the cover’s creativity and design elements. Once the winner is determined, trophies will go to the album’s art director and the designers, photographers and illustrators will receive a certificate.

In addition to the album cover category, the country album category has also been split into two groups: traditional country and contemporary country. (Last year, Beyoncé won country album for “Cowboy Carter.”) The new artist category has also been expanded to include performers who were featured on previous album of the year nominees, if they are featured on less than 20% of the album.

The Grammys kick off on Feb. 1 at Crypto.com Arena.

Richard Gadd has made £2 million from the success of Baby Reindeer, almost two years on from when the hit series became a global sensation on streaming service Netflix

Richard Gadd has made £2 million from the success of Baby Reindeer. The Scottish actor, 36, wrote and starred in the Netflix miniseries that he said was based on his real life experiences of being stalked.

In the hit drama, Richard stars as aspiring comedian Donny Dunn, who is spotted by a woman called Martha (Jessica Gunning) and he becomes the object of her obsession. The concept of the series was initially a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe, but once commissioned as a seven-part series by Netflix, Richard quickly found global fame and the show seen more than 250 million times around the world.

The programme was released in April 2024, and, almost two years on, the latest accounts on the writer’s company RRSG have revealed the fortune he has made from it all.

READ MORE: Baby Reindeer star Jessica Gunning speaks out about ‘real Martha’ ahead of BAFTAsREAD MORE: Netflix star teases ‘difficult’ role in Suranne Jones thriller Hostage

The total assets declared for 2025 came to £2,462,405, and that figure incorporated money held in both a bank account and property portfolio. Figures also show funds of shareholder funds of £1,875,649, a number that has more than doubled over the course of the last year.

The company was set up in 2018, shortly after the one-man show premiered, and the comedy writer is the sole director, meaning that he owns all the shares in it. The name of the firm is derived from the writer’s full name of Richard Robert Steven Gadd and he has listed ‘artistic creation’ as the nature of the business.

The series was also critically lauded on both sides of the Atlantic and won six Emmys two Golden Globes, and actress Jessica Gunning scooped a BAFTA earlier this year after taking on her starring role.

After Baby Reindeer became a viral hit, Richard reached millionaire status by 2024 as he found new heights of success with his writing.

However, despite his stellar success, the actor revealed he has had some “daunting times” since the show was released due to people writing hurtful comments online or shouting at him in the street.

Reflecting on why he decided to delve into his personal experiences for the series, he said: “I guess I was bored of artistic narratives where the central person is nothing but good. Life is very complicated, and people are a mixture of positive and negative. I wanted to show that, to bring that out in the world.

“I think we live in an age of almost moral enlightenment right now, where everyone is terrified of saying the wrong thing. So, to put my hand up in that age of moral enlightenment and be like ‘Oh, yeah, I made these f****** stupid mistakes’ was very daunting, and it’s still daunting in the aftermath in a lot of ways. But I think, at the same time, it has led to an appreciation of bringing the nuance back to the discussion about people, and people not being either good or bad, but being a little more nuanced than that.”

He added that he believes it would be a “good thing” if more people in the public eye are more honest about the struggles they are living through. Gadd also revealed he has had some “daunting times” in the past few months since the show was released due to people writing hurtful comments online or shouting at him in the street.

He said: “I realise I’m twinned with this now. And that’s fine, because the majority of people are really kind and understanding, but there is definitely a section of society that has splintered off. They don’t want to hear about this stuff anymore, they can’t accept the nuances of it, and they think that I was, I don’t know, asking for it. That’s very hard to live with.”

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A group of entertainment industry workers launched a new coalition that aims to advocate for the rights of creators amid the growing AI industry.

The group, called Creators Coalition on AI, was founded by 18 people, including writer-director Daniel Kwan, actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natasha Lyonne and producer Janet Yang, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Gordon-Levitt said the group is not limited to Hollywood luminaries and is open to all creators and the skilled workers around them, including podcasters, digital content creators and newsletter writers.

“We’re all frankly facing the same threat, not from generative AI as a technology, but from the unethical business practices a lot of the big AI companies are guilty of,” he said in a video posted on X on Tuesday. “The idea is that through public pressure, through collective action, through potentially litigation and eventually legislation, creators actually have a lot of power if we come together.

The coalition’s formation comes at a time when Hollywood has been grappling with the fast growth of artificial intelligence tools. Many artists have raised concerns about tools that have used their likenesses or work without their permission or compensation.

The tech industry has said that it should be able to train its AI models with content available online under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.

Some studios have partnered with AI companies to use the tools in areas including marketing and visual effects. Last week, Walt Disney Co. signed a licensing deal with San Francisco-based ChatGPT maker OpenAI for its popular Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse and Yoda to be used in the startup’s text to video tool Sora.

Kwan told The Hollywood Reporter that when Disney and OpenAI’s deal was announced many people felt “completely blindsided.”

“On one hand, you can say that this is just a licensing deal for the characters and that’s not a big deal, and it won’t completely change the way our industry works,” Kwan told THR. “But for a lot of people, it symbolically shows a willingness to work with companies that have not been able to resolve or reconcile the problems.”

There has also been lawsuits filed against some AI companies. Earlier this year, Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery sued AI business Midjourney accusing it of copyright infringement.

The Creators Coalition on AI said it plans to convene an AI advisory committee “to establish shared standards, definitions, and best practices as well as ethical and artistic protections for if and when AI is used.” Some of the principles the group lists on its website include the importance of transparency, consent, control and compensation in the use of AI tools, sensitivity to potential job losses, guardrails against misuse and deepfakes and safeguarding humanity in the creative process.

“This is not a full rejection of AI,” the group said on its website. “The technology is here. This is a commitment to responsible, human-centered innovation.”

“This is not a dividing line between the tech industry and the entertainment industry, nor a line between labor and corporations,” the group said . “Instead, we are drawing a line between those who want to do this fast, and those who want to do this right.”

The idea for the coalition was sparked by Kwan, who produced a documentary about AI, which comes out next year, Gordon-Levitt said in his video. He said work on the group began in the middle of this year. Already the collective has many signatories, including actors Natalie Portman, Greta Lee, Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom.