Drake, Shawn Mendes and The Weeknd all score nominations for 2020 Billboard Music Awards

Canadian artists Drake, Shawn Mendes, and The Weeknd all scored nominations for the 2020 Billboard Music Awards.

Drake is up for top Billboard 200 artist and top rap tour, as well as three different categories for his song No Guidance with Chris Brown. 

Shawn Mendes is up for top radio songs artist and two other categories for his song Senorita with Camila Cabello, while The Weeknd landed nominations for top R&B artist and top R&B male artist. His song Heartless also scored a nod for top R&B song.

Post Malone, meanwhile, is the sunflower of this year's awards show nominations.

The multi-platinum musician scored 16 nominations, Dick Clark Productions and NBC announced Tuesday. Malone's nominations include top artist, top male artist, top rap artist and top streaming songs artist. 

His 2019 album Hollywood's Bleeding — which featured the hits Circles, Wow and Goodbyes — is up for top Billboard 200 album while Sunflower, his collaboration with Swae Lee from the Oscar-winning animation Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, is nominated for top rap song, top collaboration and top streaming song.

Lil Nas X follows Malone with 13 nominations, while Billie Eilish and Khalid each scored 12 nods. Malone, Eilish and Khalid will compete for the show's biggest award, top artist, along with Taylor Swift and Jonas Brothers.

Original broadcast postponed from April

The 2020 Billboard Music Awards will broadcast live from The Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Oct. 14, though neither Dick Clark nor NBC offered specifics on how the show would be handled during the pandemic. The 2020 awards show was originally supposed to take place in April, but was postponed due to the coronavirus.

It's the reason why some of the nominees in the 55 categories may feel dated, as this year's awards reflect the chart period of March 23, 2019 through March 14, 2020. For instance, all five nominees for the main song award, top Hot 100 song, were nominated for Grammys back in January.

Eilish's When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? — which won the Grammy for album of the year — is up against Malone's record for top Billboard 200 album, where other nominees include Ariana Grande Thank U, Next, released in Oct. 2018, and Swift's Lover, not her recent release Folklore.

Some of the nominees were even big contenders at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards — held more than year ago —including Lil Nas X's record-breaking hit Old Town Road and Lizzo's anthemic Truth Hurts.

Lizzo, who earned 11 nominations, is a first-time Billboard nominee like Eilish and Lil Nas X. Kanye West, who released two gospel albums this year that conquered the Billboard gospel charts, is up for nine prizes, including bids for top gospel artist and top Christian artist. Four of the five songs nominated for top gospel song are from West.

Rapper Juice WRLD, who died in December and is currently dominating the charts and streaming services with his first posthumous album Legends Never Die, picked up nominations for top rap artist and top rap album for his 2019 release Death Race for Love.

Other deceased nominees included EDM superstar Avicii, who is nominated for top dance/electronic artist and top dance/electronic album for Tim, the album he started working on before he died in 2018 and was later completed by his producers and family. 

Whitney Houston, who died in 2012, picked up a nomination for top dance/electronic song for Higher Love, her platinum collaboration with Norwegian DJ-producer Kygo. Houston originally released a cover of Steve Winwood's Higher Love as a Japan-only bonus track on her 1990 album I'm Your Baby Tonight, but Kygo's dance remix of the song became an international hit after it was released last year.

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