It’s been a big year in music: Women are in pop-dominated charts, several new artists had huge breakout albums and songs, and there was the first major rap beef in quite some time. All of that and more is reflected in the nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards that were announced Friday. Of course, there were some snubs and surprises as well—this is the Grammys, after all. Here are eight takeaways from a list that was mostly predictable but serves as a reflection on the state of popular music and sets up some major story lines for the ceremony on February 2.
Beyoncé Might Finally Win the Big One
Beyoncé, predictably, cleaned up in the nominations. She and her album Cowboy Carter were nominated in all three top categories (Album, Record, and Song of the Year) and picked up other nods in pop, rap, country, and Americana categories. Over the course of her career, Beyoncé has now earned a record-demolishing 99 Grammy nominations. But the real question is whether this will finally be the first time in her career that she wins Album of the Year. Two separate past ceremonies felt defined by the impression that she was overlooked in the ultimate category, both when Adele pleaded for Beyoncé’s Lemonade to have won over 25 back in 2017 and in 2023, when Harry Styles gave a clumsy acceptance speech after Harry’s House won over Renaissance.
At last year’s Grammys, Jay-Z used his time during an acceptance speech to call out the Recording Academy for its inconsistencies in recognizing Black artists, particularly his wife, with top honors. “Even by your own metrics it doesn’t work,” he said, after pointing out that while Beyoncé has the most total Grammys, she has never won Album of the Year.
That was before Cowboy Carter was released in March, but now it does feel like by the time the ceremony comes around in February, Beyoncé will have spent the bulk of the last year daring the Grammys to deny her again. “AOTY I ain’t win,” she literally sings on “Sweet Honey Buckiin’.” Cowboy Carter is everything the Grammys tend to prize—a meticulously curated reflection of music history, with nods to country, Americana, and roots music. It features real instruments and tributes to legendary artists like Willie Nelson, the Beatles, and Dolly Parton. Cowboy Carter had grander ambitions than simply appealing to Grammy voters, but if you were trying to design an album to do just that, you could do a lot worse. If Beyoncé doesn’t come away with that gramophone, it’ll leave the impression that nothing she does will ever be good enough for the Recording Academy. It’s an impression I imagine most voters want to avoid, though they’ve certainly passed up other chances to correct it in the past.
Complicating this dynamic is that this is a genuinely loaded field for the Grammys’ biggest prize. The other nominees are Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Charli XCX’s Brat, Jacob Collier’s Djesse Vol. 4, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, André 3000’s woodwinds album New Blue Sun, and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. Though I think that while both Roan and Charli XCX have worthy cases, Hit Me Hard and Soft is probably Cowboy Carter’s stiffest competition.
It’s a gorgeous record by an Academy favorite that’s received both critical acclaim and popular approval—its streaming numbers have held up better over time than Cowboy Carter’s. In my view, it would be less of an upset this year than it was in 2017 or 2023 if someone other than Beyoncé won Album of the Year. But it would still function as a rebuke, and it would probably be the primary lasting memory of the 2025 awards.
Best New Artist Is a Heavyweight Match of Two
With apologies to Benson Boone, Doechii, Khruangbin, Raye, Shaboozey, and Teddy Swims—thank you for coming, please pick up your gift bags on your way out, and don’t forget we validate parking!—Best New Artist is a competition between Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
As always, the qualifications for this category are deeply silly; Carpenter put out her debut album in 2015. (For the record, so did Khruangbin.) But the spirit of the award is to recognize an artist who had a breakthrough in the past year, and both Roan and Carpenter blew up this year. This should be one of the most hotly contested categories, and it could certainly come down to which artist campaigns harder in the coming months.
Ultimately, though, this feels like Roan’s award. I have a hard time seeing her winning any of the other big prizes, while Carpenter has a very good chance at Song of the Year with “Espresso.” Given that, and the year Roan has had, I can see voters wanting to award her here. She’s also a bit more truly “new” than Carpenter, whose previous album, Emails I Can’t Send Fwd, had two major streaming hits in “Nonsense” and “Feather.” There’s also a theatricality and an emphasis on musicianship to Roan’s artistry that’s total Grammy bait, perhaps a little more so than Carpenter’s signature dirty humor.
Like the NFL, the Grammys Embraced Kendrick Lamar and “Not Like Us”
In the span of a week in February, Lamar’s Drake diss track will be showcased by both the Recording Academy and the National Football League, when Lamar performs the Super Bowl halftime show. That’s not necessarily shocking. Despite their spotty track record with rappers broadly, the Grammys have always loved Lamar. A hit is a hit, and the Kendrick-Drake beef was one of the most notable and interesting things that happened in music this year.
It’s also true that some of the potency of “Not Like Us” comes from Lamar’s central accusation: that one of the biggest names in music has some number of unnamed, underage female victims of sexual violence. I’m not even pearl-clutching that Lamar chose to put this in a song—there are no rules in a real beef. It does, however, feel notable that these major mainstream institutions would be comfortable spotlighting this song in the year of the Diddy trial. The Grammys clearly were: Lamar had seven total nominations, tied for second-most behind Beyoncé with Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, and Post Malone, and “Not Like Us” is up for two major awards, Record and Song of the Year.
Record of the Year is where the Grammys acknowledge the phenomenon of a song, rather than its technical aspects and construction (which are recognized in Song of the Year). To me, “Not Like Us” is in an interesting head-to-head competition with “Espresso” in that category.
Lamar’s feud with Drake was called long ago at this point, but Lamar winning a Grammy would be another L for Drake, especially given how much Drake covets the kinds of big stages the Grammys and Super Bowl provide. It is also worth noting that fellow Drake detractors Future and Metro Boomin got several nominations, including Best Rap Album for We Don’t Trust You. It’ll be worth watching all those dynamics play out and whether Drake shows up at the Grammys (or the big game) or stays home posting bathroom selfies.
The Recording Academy Is Brat
The Grammys have never paid much attention to Charli XCX, who, despite her long career and multiple top 10 hits, did not have a solo nomination to her name before Friday. But the Academy certainly paid attention to Brat, her dance-pop and electronic album with an underground spirit that captured (some of) the mainstream with its lime green branding and memeability.
Two of Charli’s seven total nominations are in the major categories of Album and Record of the Year, where she submitted “360.” She’s probably a long shot to win those awards, but she’s almost a lock to win in the Dance/Electronic Album category, which she notably entered instead of Best Pop Vocal Album. She’s more than worthy, and watching Charli go from an underappreciated niche rave girl to a Grammy winner would represent one of the coolest stories in music this year, no matter how cringeworthy the inevitable “Apple” dance bit during the show will be.
Some Pop Girls Missed the Cut
Overall, the nominations reflected what a major year this was for women in pop music—Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, and Sabrina Carpenter all cleaned up.
There were a couple of female pop artists who didn’t make the lists, though. Ariana Grande was shut out of the major categories, though she got several nominations in the pop categories. And despite being the performer who opened the 2024 Grammys, Dua Lipa and her album Radical Optimism were shut out entirely.
Mixed Results for Country Artists
Other than Cowboy Carter, it wasn’t a great showing for country music. The most glaring absence from the Song and Record of the Year categories was the Morgan Wallen and Post Malone collab “I Had Some Help,” which spent six weeks at no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Wallen had a massive year, so his absence seems at least somewhat related to his personal controversies. Also missing is current tabloid fixation Zach Bryan, though by his own volition—Bryan declined to submit his 2024 album The Great American Bar Scene or tracks from it in any categories, saying he’s uncomfortable with the idea of turning music into competition, and therefore wasn’t nominated.
It was also a quiet day for Nashville, as heavyweights Jelly Roll or even Grammy favorite Kacey Musgraves failed to be nominated outside of the country-specific categories.
Obviously, if the country establishment counted Cowboy Carter as one of their own, this would be a different conversation. But even though Cowboy Carter puts country greats like Linda Martell up for awards, both Beyoncé and Nashville have held each other at arm’s length this past year. Beyoncé declared her record a “Beyoncé album,” not a country album, and the country establishment responded by shutting her out of the Country Music Awards in September. That she got more total Grammy nominations in the country categories than any traditional country artist will play into that tension and, rightly or not, possibly expand Nashville’s growing skepticism toward the Recording Academy, which also didn’t have a country artist represented in Album, Song, or Record of the Year nominees last cycle.
Snubs and Surprises
For the most part, this was a chalky nominations list. Wallen is the obvious snub, though his extra-musical baggage does some of the work of explaining his exclusion. This year’s list of Grammy nominees very closely reflects the musical zeitgeist—you’ve got Taylor and Billie and Sabrina and Chappell and Charli, plus inescapable hits like Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” and “Not Like Us.” Maybe that’s only fair, maybe it’s a bit boring, but for the most part, this is a hard set of nominations to get upset about (especially while the Ariana stans are busy getting set for Wicked).
Still, the Grammys wouldn’t be the Grammys if a couple of things didn’t come out of left field. The nomination of the “new” Beatles song “Now and Then,” built out of an old John Lennon demo, got a Record of the Year nod. It’s never that shocking to see the Recording Academy revel in some boomercore, though I don’t think John Lennon was on a lot of predictions lists.
Another surprise was New Blue Sun, the flute album by André 3000. Perhaps the nomination is an attempt to reward experimentation by a beloved veteran artist, though the timing, around the 20-year anniversary of Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/Love Below becoming the last rap album to win the ultimate award, feels notable.
Other mild snubs include: Tommy Richman’s huge single “Million Dollar Baby” and any nominations for producers Jack Antonoff and Finneas, who worked on Album of the Year nominees but weren’t included in the production category.
If You Heard It on TikTok, You May Not Hear It at the Grammys
There were two songs in particular, Hozier’s “Too Sweet” and Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” that have been especially huge on TikTok and had a chance to ride that success to nominations. Boone is nominated for Best New Artist, but his breakout hit isn’t nominated. (You could argue the “Million Dollar Baby” snub fits into this pattern as well.) No offense to these guys, but I can’t say I mind this result. I hear these songs way too much while scrolling already.