The 2025 Grammys Awards are coming up, and as someone with an ear always to the ground for new music, one of my favorite categories is the Best New Artist category. Though people say, tongue-in-cheek, that it’s potentially a “curse” to win the Best New Artist, this year has a few artists who don’t really need the attention because they’re already owning the airwaves.
One of the lesser-known but still successful acts that are being nominated is Benson Boone, the American Idol dropout with a golden voice, who is known to do backflips on stage. Doechii, a rapper which Rolling Stone called “quirky” and “animated,” has accrued up to 300 million listens for songs on Spotify.
Khruangbin, which means “airplane” in Thai, is a trio from Houston, Texas, that blends world music such as soul, dub, rock, and psychedelia, which the New York Times called “extremely slippery, genre-wise.”
Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter have already won the hearts of the nation
There’s also RAYE, who won the British Artist of the Year at the Brit Awards 2024, Shaboozey, who melds country and hip hop and who ended up on Beyonce’s Grammy-nominated Cowboy Carter two times, and Teddy Swims, a soul, country singer who won much attention with his covers of Amy Winehouse, Chris Stapleton, and Lewis Capaldi.
But perhaps the most famous and talented artists of the bunch, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, who each have six Grammy nominations this year, including Album of the Year, seem to be head and shoulders above the rest.
Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter both have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, incorporating themes of female sexuality and the queer experience. They’ve both been in the media a great deal in the last year for their feisty on-stage personalities and their songs, which seem to have struck a real nerve, like Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” which has almost 400 million listens on Spotify.
They are not just running for, and extremely likely to win, the Album of the Year, a tough competition, running against Charlie xcx’s Brat, which spawned the term “Brat Summer” last year, but they are competing for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
I predict Chappell Roan is going to beat out Sabrina Carpenter in the Best New Artist category, and I think she might win Album of the Year, as well. But Sabrina Carpenter is a powerhouse as well.
Like a good sports competition, like the Super Bowl, coming up in February, it is like two stellar teams competing against one another, where there is certain to be some people upset. Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan have won the hearts of the nation, whether they prove their worth in the Grammy wins or not.