(Credits: Far Out / Recording Academy)
Sat 27 December 2025 0:00, UK
Even though it has drawn its fair share of criticism for having a supposedly narrow-minded view of the world of popular music, the Grammys have always remained the most coveted awards ceremony in their field since 1959.
Their dominance comes as a result of the fact that the decorations are handed out by an esteemed panel of judges from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and when you’ve got a name like that to back you up, then people are always going to consider you to be a voice of authority when it comes to awarding artistry.
However, because of this perceived lack of variety in the artists that they gravitate towards, this has led to the same handful of artists receiving awards on multiple occasions, something which has irked onlookers due to the fact that there is a wealth of music that goes unnoticed and uncelebrated despite there being plenty of reasons for it to be worthy of such an accolade.
This has, of course, led to the Academy introducing a wider range of categories that cover different genres over the years, allowing artists from different musical backgrounds an opportunity to be included, given how they would stand less of a chance in the general categories. At the same time, however, there is still an overwhelming amount of oversight when it comes to nominating a variety of artists, and even the more niche categories will gravitate towards the same artists year after year, leaving other deserving performers out to dry.
Given the Academy’s propensity for dishing out awards to the same people on multiple occasions, you would imagine that it wouldn’t have taken long for an artist to receive the award for ‘Record of the Year’ across multiple decades, but who was the first to achieve this in one of the most prized categories at the Grammys?
The first to win ‘Record of the Year’ in two different decades
With the Grammys having been first awarded in 1959, there wouldn’t have been much of an opportunity for the earliest recipients to have won during the 1950s and ‘60s. While they did hand out this award twice in their inaugural year, with the prize going to Italian songwriter Domenico Modugno in May for ‘Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)’, and to Bobby Darin for ‘Mack the Knife’ in November, neither artist would repeat their victory during the ’60s.
However, there would be a duplicate winner of the award in the ’60s, with composer Henry Mancini taking it home in both ’62 for ‘Moon River’ and ’64 for ‘Days of Wine and Roses’. Mancini was the first to manage this, but he would not manage to win a third award at the Grammys in this category, opening up the possibility of another artist becoming the first to spread their achievements across multiple decades.
Pop group The 5th Dimension would win the award in ’68 for ‘Up, Up and Away’, and only two years later, they’d manage to win a second time with the medley of ‘Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In’, which took the honour in 1970 after its use in the musical, Hair.
Strangely, Simon and Garfunkel would manage to win for a second time the following year, having first won in 1969, with the two artists swapping the award back and forth over the course of a four-year period. While many other artists have won it on multiple occasions, these are the only two to have done so in two different decades in the same incarnation, although if Paul Simon was included as a solo artist, he has managed to do it in three decades, having won in 1988 for ‘Graceland’, while Bruno Mars won in twice in the 2010s as both a featured artist and solo artist, and as one half of Silk Sonic, who won in 2022 for ‘Leave The Door Open’.
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