I’ve been doing Grammy predictions for a bunch of years now and I usually hit on about half of them. That’s OK, but it does mean that for any particular category, I’m just as likely to get it wrong as to get it right.
Usually, when I miss, it’s because I chose the wrong one from a pair of frontrunners. That means that my second choice ended up winning. Of course, there are times – too many times – when I completely misread the tea leaves and don’t have a clue.
This seems like the right way to begin a little article predicting the 2025 Grammys in the field of Country Music. Spoiler alert – I’m just throwing darts in the dark here.
Who will win in the Country categories at the 2025 Grammy Awards?
The Recording Academy classifies Country Music under its fifth field – Country & American Roots Music. There are four categories specifically devoted to Country Music, but there is a lot of potential overlap with “American Roots” music, and that is just one of the complicating factors in guessing how voters will react. The past 15-20 years have seen a great intermingling between traditional genres, with country music adopting more pop and rap influences.
There was a time when country music was among the easiest of fields to predict because the product was so homogenized. Music Row was never going to recognize groundbreaking performers like Ray Charles or Gram Parsons as legitimate country artists. But that has grown increasingly harder to do as all genres have begun overlapping.
This problem of defining what is and isn’t country music has led to ever-increasing politicization of honors like the Country Music Awards and the Grammys. On one side, you have the gatekeepers, determined to keep outside forces right there – on the outside. Then you have the progressives who want to throw open those gates and crash the party with new sounds and themes.
If this sounds like the country at large, that’s no accident. Country music has always been a cultural barometer. It is often ground zero in the culture wars. And that is what really makes predictions impossible. You can never know how much voters will be motivated by making a cultural statement versus by merely responding to the music. That has never been truer than this year.
So let’s dive in and try to predict the four Country categories for 2025, fully aware that this is the least predictable category there is.
Country Solo Performance
Let’s discuss the elephant in the room right up front. In case you missed it, Beyonce, the most-honored artist in Grammy history, released a country album in 2024. Or did she? It depends on who you ask. Beyonce herself has kind of taken both sides of the issue.
To me, there is no question that Cowboy Carter and many of its tracks are fully qualified to be considered for country music awards. The Country Music Awards disagreed. Beyonce did receive a single nomination.
“16 Carriages,” Beyonce’s song that is nominated for Solo Performance is entirely legitimate. It is modern country pop. My problem with choosing it here is that it isn’t the best country song on Cowboy Carter. We’ll get to that shortly.
I feel the same way about Chris Stapleton’s “It Takes a Woman.” Legit choice, but there were better options. I think the Academy would love to recognize Kacey Musgraves for “The Architect,” but that gatekeeper thing may enter into this possibility. Musgraves’ country bona fides are not in question, but the song sounds much closer to roots pop than to country. I think it may be in the wrong category.
That leaves Jelly Roll’s tidal wave “I Am Not Okay” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” Jelly Roll was nominated for Best New Artist last year and Shaboozey has that honor this year. I have this gut feeling that “A Bar Song,” which actually incorporates a hip-hop song into its chorus, is a big enough cultural phenom this year to claim this award.
Duo/Group Performance
Did I mention how tricky these particular predictions are this year? This category completely baffles me. It’s not that these aren’t good songs that got a fair amount of acclaim. It’s just that I don’t think any are worthy of the prize. Not when Orville Peck released an album with five songs that are all more deserving of this particular designation.
Since I don’t imagine my write-in campaign for the Peck/Willie Nelson collab “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” is going anywhere, I suppose I’ll pick one of the five actual nominees.
Beyonce is here again. “II Most Wanted,” her duet with 2024’s big Grammy winner Miley Cyrus, is among the least “country” songs on Cowboy Carter. This is not to say it’s totally out of place, as a track like “Spaghetti” would have been. It is kind of country in some ways, but I don’t see it as a serious contender here.
Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” falls into the same boat, at least to my ears. I suppose it’s country enough, but if it weren’t for the presence of Morgan Wallen, this would not be nominated in this category. “Break Mine” by the Brothers Osborne doesn’t strike me as one of their best. Dan + Shay’s “Bigger Houses” would probably be my choice out of the five nominees, but I don’t think it has much of a chance.
That leaves a pretty safe choice in critical darling Kelsea Ballerini and Americana pop rising star Noah Kahan to take the Grammy for “Cowboys Cry Too.” If that sounds like faint praise, let me say that it’s a fine gentle ballad and would be a perfectly acceptable winner. Yeah, that’s still kind of faint praise. What can I say – Orville Peck should have been here.
Song
A third category. A third Beyonce song from Cowboy Carter. The only problem I have in picking “Texas Hold ‘Em” for this award is that it is the only one of the five nominees that was not nominated for one of the previous two awards. I would have put it into the Solo Performance category in place of “16 Carriages,” but that didn’t happen. So will it get the votes to win this one?
As I said when discussing Solo Performance, “The Architect,” “I Am Not Okay,” and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)" are all strong contenders. I don’t think “I Had Sime Help” will win this one, and I’ll rule out Jelly Roll because the strength of that song is his performance, and I didn’t pick it in the performance category. I have this sneaky suspicion that Kacey Musgrave is going to win this, but it’s really a toss-up with both Shaboozey and Beyonce.
Total gut call – I’m going with “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
Album
When the Grammy nominations initially came out, I immediately predicted that Beyonce would win for overall Album of the Year, but not for Country Album of the Year. That is not nearly as crazy as it might seem, because Cowboy Carter has a lot of different musical impulses. That’s one of the things that makes it great.
You’ll have to wait to see if I changed my mind about the overall Album prize, but I have not changed it regarding this one. Beyonce does not win Best Country Album. Nor does Post Malone, for reasons already stated.
I’d feel more comfortable picking Lainey Wilson’s excellent Whirlwind if she had any other nominations this year. This again leaves me with Kacey Musgraves as one of the finalists. As with Song, I’ve gone back and forth on this.
It would not surprise me at all if Musgraves were to win, but I find it hard to pick against Chris Stapleton. He is beloved. He is very good. He has won before. And he straddles the line between old and new better than any country artist I know of. Traditionalists like him. So do modernists. So I’m picking Higher to win Country Album of the Year.