After the nominations were read Thursday morning from Hollywood, two artists dealing with personal turmoil emerged as winners already: Kanye West, who is still grieving over the unexpected death of his mother last month; and Amy Winehouse, whose struggles with substance abuse have been documented in her music and in tabloid news. West received more nominations than any artist eight for his album Graduation. Winehouse was second, with six, for her breakthrough album, Back to Black.

Both albums are candidates in the album of the year category. Winehouse s song Rehab is also a nominee in two other big categories: song of the year (for songwriting) and record of the year (production). Like most fields of Grammy nominees, this one was loaded with curious surprises, like the best new artist category, in which all the nominees are female. Winehouse and country singer Taylor Swift, as expected, are nominees.

The three others, however, were pleasant surprises: Feist, who is Leslie Feist of the Canadian art-rock band Broken Social Scene; the emo-punk band Paramore, led by the teenage lead singer Hayley Williams; and the jazz-soul singer Ledisi. Ledisi, who released her first album in 2000, is so relatively obscure that Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters had no idea how to pronounce her name as they read her nomination.

Speaking of the Foo Fighters, they surprisingly received five nominations, including album of the year, for their latest album, Echoes, Silence, Patience Grace, which received mixed reviews from critics. Jay-Z, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and T-Pain also received five nominations; nine others received four, including Feist, Bruce Springsteen, Akon, Ne-Yo, Rhianna, Chris Daughtry and Dierks Bentley, who managed to out-nominee Carrie Underwood in the country category another surprise.