The pop music landscape has been awash in superstar juggernauts (Taylor Swift, Beyoncé), headline-grabbing beefs (Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar, et. al.) and a freshly minted gaggle of hit-makers such as Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and Shaboozey. Appropriately enough, each of the aforementioned artists — except Drake, who stopped submitting his music for Grammy consideration a while back — received loads of nominations when next year’s Grammy Awards contenders were announced Friday.
That isn’t to say that everything played out exactly as expected. And there are plenty of subplots and storylines to unpack as we await the Grammys telecast on Feb. 2, 2025:
1. It’s been a massive year for women in pop. Remember back in 2018, when Neil Portnow, then head of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, said that women needed to “step up” after that year’s Grammys were overwhelmingly won by men? Yeah, he sucked. This year, women dominate the major categories: In record of the year, song of the year and album of the year, six of the eight nominees are headlined by women, though several share billing with male counterparts. And, while the best new artist field is split 50-50, the overwhelming frontrunners (Roan and Carpenter) are both women.
2. As expected, Beyoncé leads the field. The two most heavily nominated musicians of all time share a household: Until Friday, Beyoncé and Jay-Z were tied with 88 nominations apiece, while Beyoncé holds the all-time record for Grammy wins with 32. Now, Queen Bey has a stunning 99 nominations to her name, as Cowboy Carter and an assortment of its songs have racked up a field-leading 11 nods. It helps that Cowboy Carter sprawls across multiple genres and brings in loads of collaborators, which made her eligible in more categories than, say, Chappell Roan, who lacks eligible collaborations and didn’t submit in any genres outside pop.
3. Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter join a select group. The Grammys have four general, cross-genre categories, which have collectively come to be known as The Big Four: album of the year, record of the year, song of the year and best new artist. In the history of the awards, only 13 artists have been nominated in all four categories during the same year — most recently Olivia Rodrigo three years ago. (FINNEAS kinda did it that year, too, but it didn’t count; he was nominated for best new artist as a solo act, but his other nominations in that year’s Big Four were headlined by his sister, Billie Eilish.) In the latest round of nominations, Roan and Carpenter are up for each of The Big Four; if either happens to sweep, she’ll become only the third artist ever to do so, after Christopher Cross in 1981 and Eilish in 2020.
4. Wait, Sabrina Carpenter — whose Short n’ Sweet is her sixth album — is up for best new artist? Yeah, the category of best new artist could really use a rebrand, perhaps to something like “best breakthrough artist,” because newness is very much in the eye of the beholder here. But Carpenter broke through in a big way in 2024, so she was eligible. (The rules are more byzantine than that, but that’s the gist of it.) Same goes for her fellow nominee Khruangbin, which has been cranking out albums since 2015, but fairly recently became popular enough to fill stadiums.
5. Speaking of confusing categories… Grammy viewers have long been baffled by the difference between record and song of the year. As it turns out, so are Grammy voters, who heard Shaboozey’s chart-topping “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and nominated it for song of the year, but not record of the year. Song of the year is an award for composition, while record of the year is an award for the complete package: the production, the performance, the vibe. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” is terrific; it’s great fun. But it’s more of a “record of the year” kind of song than a “song of the year” kind of song.
6. The record of the year field does include one very old song. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” famously interpolates J-Kwon’s 2004 hit “Tipsy,” but the Recording Academy went even further back for the awards’ premier category. John Lennon wrote and recorded his demo of The Beatles’ “Now and Then” sometime around 1977, but the song wasn’t finished or released until late 2023. Naturally, it came out with a huge surge of fanfare, though it’s more curiosity than classic; still, it’s one of eight songs nominated for record of the year in 2025. If it wins, it’ll be the first time a Beatles song won a Grammy since all the way back in… February 2024, when a remastered reissue of 1966’s “I’m Only Sleeping” won best music video.
7. The album of the year field features two extreme dark horses. Six of the eight nominees for album of the year were pretty much mortal locks: Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, Charli xcx’s Brat, Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. Those six albums dominated 2024 — not only based on sales and streaming, but also in terms of their overall cultural footprint. The next two? Not so much.
One is Jacob Collier’s Djesse Vol. 4, which marks Collier’s first album of the year nomination since the one he got for, um, Djesse Vol. 3. With credit to NPR Music editor Jacob Ganz, who referred to this nomination as “filling the Jon Batiste jazz-but-with-smiling spot,” the nod to Collier feels strange coming from such a crowded field of powerhouse contenders. Still, it’s not as unexpected as the nomination for André 3000’s New Blue Sun — which is, remember, an epic-length collection of flute-forward instrumental odysseys. OutKast was a Grammy staple, sure, and lots of people were curious about André’s first record in 17 years. But… album of the year? Really?
8. Of course, there were snubs. Getting left out of a field of five, six or eight nominees isn’t technically a “snub” — it’s just math, really — but there were still surprises among this year’s Grammy omissions. Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism didn’t perform as well as its predecessor, and the field of women in pop was unusually crowded and strong this year, but her lack of nominations feels notable. (See also: Ariana Grande, who did pick up three nominations but was shut out of The Big Four.) Fans might be surprised to see Zach Bryan absent from the field, given how well his records performed in 2024, but he refused to submit any of his music for consideration, so he’s out. The biggest surprise of all may be Vampire Weekend, whose Only God Was Above Us was considered a lock to be nominated in several categories — possibly even album of the year — but got left out of all of them.
9. Speaking of which, Ye’s Grammy star may finally be fading. The artist formerly known as Kanye West has been nominated for 75 Grammys, and won 24 of them. Even a long string of controversies failed to dampen the Grammys’ enthusiasm for him, given that Donda was nominated for album of the year just three years ago. But Ye’s latest album, the Ty Dolla $ign collaboration Vultures 2, yielded just one nomination, for best rap song (“Carnival”). Ye is either matched or exceeded by an impressive assortment of women, as this year’s rap categories include nominations for Cardi B, Doechii, GloRilla, Beyoncé (joined by Linda Martell), Latto and Rapsody (with Erykah Badu).
10. Never, ever overlook Taylor Swift. Wait, did you just read 12 paragraphs and only one of them mentioned Taylor Swift? Is that even legal? Really, how dare you? Swift picked up six more nominations this year, bringing her total to 58 overall, with 24 wins — including four album of the year gramophones. She’s picked up her seventh nomination for album of the year (for The Tortured Poets Department), is in the running for song and record of the year (for “Fortnight”) and… hey, where are you going?
Transcript:
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Nominations for next year’s Grammy Awards were announced Friday, and Beyonce leads the field with 11.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM”)
BEYONCE: (Singing) This ain’t Texas, ain’t no hold ’em. So lay your cards down, down, down, down.
DETROW: Here to talk Grammys is Stephen Thompson from NPR Music and Pop Culture Happy Hour. Hey, Stephen.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Hello, Scott.
DETROW: So we mentioned Beyonce. In all things, you must start with Beyonce.
THOMPSON: That’s right.
DETROW: Give me the top-line takeaways beyond Beyonce from this field.
THOMPSON: Well, if you look at the year in pop, it’s been a huge, huge year for women. Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Charlie XCX.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “360”)
CHARLI XCX: (Singing) Yeah, 360. When you’re in the mirror, do you like what you see? When you’re in the mirror, you’re just looking at me. I’m everywhere. I’m so Julia, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
THOMPSON: Those six women really dominated the major fields, sort of more or less as expected. I think a lot of these awards came down in a way that reflects the way the year in music played out. These are the records that had kind of the biggest cultural footprint of the year, that were kind of the closest we had to a monoculture. So it’s not surprising that those records dominated the field. There were, however, along the way, a handful of surprises.
DETROW: Talk me through that because again, everything you just said, like, yeah, makes sense. What were the…
THOMPSON: Right.
DETROW: What were the curveballs?
THOMPSON: I think the curveballs came in record of the year. There was a – you know, there was an expectation kind of that a lot of the biggest – you know, a lot of the biggest songs of the year – like a – Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” might have been nominated. It was nominated for song of the year but not record of the year. What was nominated for record of the Year – the Beatles’ “Now And Then.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “NOW AND THEN”)
THE BEATLES: (Singing) Will love you, now and then.
DETROW: Can you explain that to me?
THOMPSON: So “Now And Then” was a demo that John Lennon recorded around 1977.
DETROW: Yeah.
THOMPSON: It was completed and then released late in 2023 and billed as the final Beatles song. It’s a nice song. It’s pretty. It’s a little bit of a trifle, not necessarily something that I would think of as one of the records of the year.
DETROW: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “NOW AND THEN”)
THE BEATLES: (Singing) To me, I know…
THOMPSON: To me, a bigger surprise is in the album of the year field. The six artists that I named up top – they are all in the album of the year field, as well as Jacob Collier, who’s kind of a Grammy favorite. The eighth nominee was “New Blue Sun” by Andre 3000.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRE 3000’S “I SWEAR I REALLY WANTED TO MAKE A “RAP” ALBUM BUT THIS IS LITERALLY THE WAY THE WIND BLEW ME THIS TIME”)
DETROW: As a proud millennial, Andre 3000 means a lot to me, but this was the flute album.
THOMPSON: This is the album of instrumental flute odysseys. It’s an interesting record, but it’s a curiosity.
DETROW: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Is it one of the eight albums that people listened to and celebrated the most in – within this eligibility period? I wouldn’t say so or think so. Andre 3000 name recognition goes a long way.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRE 3000’S “I SWEAR I REALLY WANTED TO MAKE A “RAP” ALBUM BUT THIS IS LITERALLY THE WAY THE WIND BLEW ME THIS TIME”)
DETROW: Any major snubs?
THOMPSON: I think with so many kind of juggernaut women in pop, that crowded a couple of major artists out of the field. Dua Lipa was shut out completely.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “HOUDINI”)
DUA LIPA: (Singing) You need me. I’m not here for long. Catch me, or I go Houdini. I come, and I go.
THOMPSON: She received no nominations, and she’s certainly been embraced by the Grammys in the past. Ariana Grande was shut out of the major categories, though she received three nominations in the pop fields. Vampire Weekend being completely shut out really surprised me. I anticipated a field, particularly in album of the year…
DETROW: Yeah.
THOMPSON: …Where their album “Only God Was Above Us” might have slipped into that field, but they were – they weren’t even nominated for best alternative album. That did surprise me. And for those who were expecting a big performance from Zach Bryan, who’s a major, major star in country music…
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I REMEMBER EVERYTHING”)
ZACH BRYAN: (Singing) A cold shoulder at closing time, you were begging me to stay till the sun rose. Strained words…
THOMPSON: He didn’t submit any of his music for consideration, and he was left out entirely.
DETROW: Stephen, last question – by and large, I feel like we’ve talked over the years of, like, times that the Grammys are aligned with pop culture and the actual zeitgeist of music and times that it’s, like, cartoonishly off.
THOMPSON: Way off, yeah.
DETROW: Which one does this field fall into?
THOMPSON: This really feels like it falls into the zeitgeist of pop culture. I mean, when you think about the summer of 2024, one of the songs you are thinking about is Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.” It was completely inescapable.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ESPRESSO”)
SABRINA CARPENTER: (Singing) Now he’s thinking about me every night. Oh, is it that sweet? I guess so. Say you can’t sleep, baby, I know, that’s that me espresso. Move it up, down…
THOMPSON: Those six artists I mentioned at the top felt like the six biggest records of this eligibility period. It makes sense that they are lavishly nominated. This is one where they feel basically in tune with what’s going on.
DETROW: OK. That’s NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson. Stephen, always good to talk to you.
THOMPSON: Always good to talk to you, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ESPRESSO”)
CARPENTER: (Singing) Are on vacation, and I got…