Everything you need to know about the 2025 Grammy nominations

It’s been a big year in music: Women are on 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 this and more is reflected in the nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards, which were announced on Friday. Of course there were also some snubs and surprises – 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 storylines for the Feb. 2 ceremony.

Beyoncé may finally win the big one

Beyoncé predictably cleaned up the nominations. She and her album Cowboy Carter was nominated in all three top categories (album, record and song of the year) and earned other nods in the pop, rap, country and Americana categories. Over the course of her career, Beyoncé has now earned a record-breaking 99 Grammy nominations. But the real question is whether it will finally be the first time in her career that she wins Album of the Year. Two separate previous 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 afterwards 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 inconsistency in recognizing black artists, especially his wife, with major honors. “Even by your own metrics, it doesn’t work,” he said after pointing out that while Beyoncé has the most Grammys, she has never won Album of the Year.

It was before Cowboy Carter was released in March, but now it feels like when the ceremony takes place in February, Beyoncé will have spent most 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 are wont to award – a carefully curated reflection of music history with nods to country, Americana and roots music. It features real instruments and tributes to legendary artists such as Willie Nelson, The Beatles and Dolly Parton. Cowboy Carter had bigger ambitions than simply appealing to Grammy voters, but if you tried to design an album for just that, you could make a lot worse. If Beyoncé doesn’t come away with that gramophone, it will 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 missed other chances to fix it in the past.

Complicating this dynamic is that this is a truly loaded field for the Grammys’ biggest prize. The other nominees are Billie Eilish’s Hit me hard and softChappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern PrincessCharli XCX’s AbruptJacob Colliers Djesse Vol. 4Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ SweetAndré 3000’s woodwind album New blue sunand Taylor Swift’s The Ward of Tortured Poets. Although I think that while both Roan and Charli XCX have worthy cases, Hit me hard and soft is likely Cowboy Carter‘s toughest competition.

It’s a gorgeous record from an Academy favorite that has received both critical acclaim and popular approval – its streaming numbers have held up better over time than Cowboy Carter‘s. In my opinion, it would be less upset this year than it was in 2017 or 2023 if someone other than Beyoncé won album of the year. But it would still serve as a rebuke, and would probably be the primary lasting reminder of the 2025 awards.

Best New Artist is a heavyweight of two

With apologies to Benson Boone, Doechii, Khruangbin, Raye, Shaboozey and Teddy Swims – thanks for coming, please collect your gift bags on your way out and don’t forget we validate parking! Best New Artist is a contest between Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.

As always, the qualifications for this category are deeply silly; Carpenter released his debut album in 2015. (For the record, so did Khruangbin.) But 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 price. I have a hard time seeing her winning any of the other big prizes, while Carpenter has a very good shot at song of the year with “Espresso.” Given that, and the year Roan has had, I can see voters will reward her here. She’s also a bit more “new” than Carpenter, whose previous albums Emails I cannot forward had two major streaming hits in “Nonsense” and “Feather”. There’s also a theatricality and an emphasis on musicality to Roan’s artistry that’s total Grammy bait, perhaps a little more so than Carpenter’s signature dirty humor.

Like NFL, Grammy’s Embraced Kendrick Lamar and “Not Like Us”

For one week in February, Lamar’s Drake diss track will be featured by both the Recording Academy and the National Football League when Lamar performs the Super Bowl halftime show. It’s not necessarily shocking. Despite their spotty track record with rappers widely, 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 to happen in music this year.

It’s also true that some of the power of “Not Like Us” comes from Lamar’s central charge: that one of the biggest names in music has a number of unnamed, underage female victims of sexual violence. I’m not even scared that Lamar chose to put this in a song – there are no rules in a real beef. However, it feels remarkable that these major mainstream institutions would be comfortable spotlighting this song in the year of the Diddy process. The Grammys clearly were: Lamar had seven nominations in total, second only to 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 recognize the phenomenon of a song, rather than its technical aspects and construction (which is recognized in Song of the Year). For me, “Not Like Us” is in an interesting head-to-head competition with “Espresso” in that category.

Lamar’s feud with Drake was called a long time ago at this point, but Lamar winning a Grammy would be another L for Drake, especially considering how much Drake covets the kind of big stages the Grammys and Super Bowl provide. It’s also worth noting that fellow Drake rivals Future and Metro Boomin also picked up multiple nominations, including Best Rap Album for We don’t trust you. It will be worth watching all those dynamics play out, and whether Drake shows up to the Grammys (or the big game) or stays home and posts 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, didn’t have a solo nomination to her name until Friday. But the Academy was certainly aware Abrupther dance-pop and electronic albums with an underground spirit that captured (some of) the mainstream with its lime green branding and amiability.

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 longshot to win these 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 seeing Charli go from an underrated niche rave girl to a Grammy winner would represent one of the coolest stories in music this year, no matter how creepy the inevitable Apple Dance bit during the show will be be.

Some poppies missed the cut

Overall, the nominations reflected what a big year this was for women in pop music – Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter all cleaned up.

However, there were a few female pop artists who didn’t make the charts. Ariana Grande was shut out of the major categories, although she received several nominations in the pop categories. And despite being the artist who opened the 2024 Grammys, Dua Lipa and her album Radical optimism was completely closed out.

Mixed results for country artists

Other than Cowboy Carterit wasn’t a great showing for country music. The most conspicuous absence from the Song and Record of the Year categories was the Morgan Wallen and Post Malone collaboration “I Had Some Help,” which spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Wallen had a huge year, so his absence at least seems somewhat related to his personal controversies. The current tabloid fixation is also missing Zach Bryan, though of his own volition – Bryan declined to submit his 2024 album The Great American Bar Scene or tracks from it in any category, saying that he is uncomfortable with the idea of ​​making music a competition, which is why he was not nominated.

It was also a quiet day for Nashville, as heavyweights Jelly Roll or even Grammy favorite Kacey Musgraves were not nominated outside of the country-specific categories.

It is clear if the country’s establishment counts 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 kept each other at arm’s length for the 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 garnered more total Grammy nominations in the country categories than any traditional country artist will play into that excitement and, rightly or wrongly, possibly expand Nashville’s growing skepticism against the Recording Academy, which also did not have a country artist represented in the album, song or record of the year nominees last cycle.

Snuff and surprises

For the most part, this was a chalky list of nominations. Wallen is the obvious snub, although his extra-musical baggage does some of the work in 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 inevitable hits like Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and “Not Like Us.” Maybe it’s only fair, maybe it’s a little boring, but for the most part, this is a tough set of nominations to be upset about (especially while the Ariana punches are busy getting nominated for Evil).

Still, the Grammys wouldn’t be the Grammys if a few things didn’t come out of left field. The nomination of the “new” Beatles song “Now and Then”, built from an old John Lennon demo, got the record of the year. It never is to shocking to see the Recording Academy reveling in some boomercore, though I don’t think so John Lennon was on many prediction lists.

Another surprise was New blue sunthe flute album by André 3000. Perhaps the nomination is an attempt to reward experimentation from a beloved veteran artist, though the timing, around the 20th anniversary of Outkasts Speakerboxxx/Love Below becoming the last rap album to win the ultimate award feels remarkable.

Other mild snubs include: Tommy Richman’s huge single “Million Dollar Baby” and eventual nominations for producers Jack Antonoff and Finneas, who worked on the Album of the Year nominees but were not included in the production category.

If you heard it on TikTok, you might 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 particularly big on TikTok and had a chance to parlay that success into nominations. Boone was nominated for Best New Artist, but his breakout hit is not nominated. (You could argue that the “Million Dollar Baby” dude fits this pattern as well.) No offense to these guys, but I can’t say I mind this outcome. I already hear these songs way too much while scrolling.