Dubbed as "music's biggest night," the 2014 Grammy Awards is about to kick off on Sunday with its massive celebration of 2013's best music in the entire North American continent. The 56th Annual Grammy Awards will start at 8 P.M. ET at the Staples Center in Los Angeles and can be watched on CBS network and Citytv, and live stream on GRAMMY Live and CBS.com.

The star-studded event is packed with music's most prestigious honor and the industry's brightest talents. The three and a half hour show will be hosted by performer LL Cool J and features epic match-ups of performers from rock band Imagine Dragon and rapper Kendrick Lamar to Pink and Fun's Nate Ruess.

Not to mention performers like Madonna, Mettalica, Ringo Star, Paul McCartney, Robin Thicke, Chicago, Sara Bareilles, Carole King, Billie Joe Armstrong, Miranda Lambert, John Legend, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of Stone Age, Dave Grohl, Michael Buble and Neil Young.

The range of talents for this year's award is pretty extraordinary; a mash-up of the current hitmakers and the old hitmakers. "You see a lot of great established artists in the nominations, artists into their sophomore or junior albums who are soaring, and some brand new people who broke out with very different kinds of music. For us, that's the best-case scenario," says Neil Portnow, president/CEO of the Recording Academy.

Leading the Grammy nominees is rap heavyweight Jay-Z with nine nods followed by Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Pharrell Williams with seven nominations each. Rapper Drake and mastering engineer Bob Ludwig have five each.

Here are the nominees in central categories:

  • Album of the year: The Blessed Unrest, Sara Bareilles; Random Access Memories, Daft Punk; Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, Kendrick Lamar; The Heist, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis; Red, Taylor Swift.
  • Record of the year (for performance): Get Lucky, Daft Punk & Pharrell Williams; Radioactive, Imagine Dragons; Royals, Lorde; Locked Out of Heaven, Bruno Mars; Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke featuring T.I. & Pharrell Williams.
  • Song of the year (for songwriting): Just Give Me a Reason, Jeff Bhasker, Pink & Nate Ruess; Locked Out of Heaven, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine & Bruno Mars; Roar, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Bonnie McKee, Katy Perry & Henry Walter; Royals, Joel Little & Ella Yelich O'Connor; Same Love, Ben Haggerty, Mary Lambert & Ryan Lewis.
  • Best New Artist: James Blake; Kendrick Lamar; Macklemore & Ryan Lewis; Kacey Musgraves; Ed Sheeran.

The 2014 Grammy Awards will officially open in a pre-telecast ceremony on Sunday at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles at 4 P.M. ET. The annual ceremony will be hosted by singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper where approximately 70 categories for the awards will be presented.