Nine takeaways from the 2025 Grammy Award nominations

The Grammy nominations were announced last week. You might have missed it because, even though the Grammy television show is the only award show people care about anymore, the Recording Academy has never done a very good job of building up narratives leading into the program itself. That’s partly attributable to the immense scope.

There are something like seven hundred thousand individual Grammy Awards, and every year, they add a bunch, eliminate a bunch, change the names, and change the eligibility rules. It can get kind of difficult to follow.

This year, for the first time in a while, I don’t think the Academy made any major changes. They tinkered with some rules, but that’s about it. It may be a sign of a new restraint but is more likely due to some paperwork oversight that will result in extra new categories next year in “Gospel Hip Hop” and “Sunshine Grindcore” for songs that put a rosy spin on Hell.

Nine takeaways from the nominations of the 2025 Grammy Awards

Until then, we have the 67th Grammys to look forward to coming on February 2, 2025. Here are a few quick takes on the nominations and what they may indicate about this year’s eventual winners.

The dominance of women continues unabated

There are 24 nominations up for grabs amongst the Big Three Awards – Album, Record, and Song of the Year. Of those 24 slots, eighteen-and-a-half were taken by women. (The half is due to “Die With a Smile,” which is up for Song of the Year and credited to both Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars.

Though the nominated songwriters do recognize several other men, so you can go crazy with that if you choose.) Strange as it may seem, that is actually a more balanced slate than last year’s nominees, where just one man – John Batiste – performed a song/album nominated for one of the major awards. There was a time when men dominated most pop music fields. That time is long gone.

The dominance of Jack Antonoff may be coming to an end

Antonoff has won three consecutive Grammys for Producer of the Year. Though he has worked with many of the top industry stars, such as Lana Del Rey, Lorde, and St. Vincent, he is primarily known today as Taylor Swift’s producer. Swift is once again nominated in all three major categories this year, but Antonoff is not. This clears the way for two things to happen.

First, someone new will take the producing Grammy. My money is on Daniel Nigro, who I think deserved the award last year. This year, he has Chappell Roan’s monster hit The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess as well as several Olivia Rodrigo releases on his resume. Secondly, and more culturally significant, this is the year that Beyonce finally gets her Album of the Year Grammy.

Is there any future for rock & roll producers?

Consider Andrew Watt. Watt is the last person not named “Antonoff” to win Producer of the Year. He did it back in 2021, primarily working with Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. But Watt, like fellow New York prodigy Rick Rubin, has always shown eclectic tastes.

This year, he helmed albums by venerable rock legends Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones, both of which were nominated in the rock album category. (He also produced the nominated Song of the Year, “Die With a Smile.”) Still, there was no room for Watt on the Producer’s list. This is just one more sign of how far traditional rock & roll has sunk in the eyes of the public.

War horses

And, I mean, can you really blame the public if the Recording Academy continues to promote ancient artists as leading rock figures? I’ll tread carefully with the Stones’ Hackneyed Diamonds because some people get really mad when I say it’s only average. Not bad, mind you. I’m not saying it’s bad. But it’s not that good, either. Still, the Stones got a Grammy nomination.

More egregiously, the Beatles’ “Now And Then” may be a pleasant artifact and an engineering miracle. But it’s a very, very dull song. Nominating it for Record of the Year is the single biggest head-scratcher in a year when Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun secured a coveted Album of the Year nod. The Pearl Jam Rock Album of the Year nomination seems tame by comparison, though this is run-of-the-mill Pearl Jam. There were far better, newer, fresher songs and albums that deserved the recognition.

If you want to hear newer rock & roll, check out Caligula’s Horse’s Charcoal Grace or the Alkaline Trio’s Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs. Those artists get shunted off into subgenres like progressive metal or pop punk, but they are actually just quality rock & roll. It is out there, and it shouldn’t be as hard to find as the mainstream recording industry makes it.

iHeartRadio rules the alt universe

More than half of the nominees in the Alt Performance category – Cage the Elephant, Fontaines D.C., and St. Vincent – are headlining the IHeratRadio Alter Ego Tour next year. Whether I personally like or dislike those bands doesn’t really matter. They are all reasonable choices. But I bristle whenever I see so much of any genre coming from a similar corporate source.

I am not suggesting that anything nefarious is going on here or that these bands should turn down lucrative touring opportunities. Far from it. I just intend to keep my eyes on this going forward and maybe try to champion a few bands that didn’t make the iHeart cut.

The conflicted state of country music

I am content with the nominations in the major Country categories. I would have liked to have seen Charley Crockett’s $10 Cowboy nominated for Country album instead of being siphoned off into the Americana category. The same applies to Sierra Ferrell, but I suppose this is what happens when you have so many overlapping categories. It allows for more recognition of the broad category.

Unrelated to those personal choices, I think we will see a very rare occurrence this year. I already said that I think this is the year that Beyonce wins Album of the Year for Cowboy Carter. It was also nominated for Best Country Album, which should not surprise anyone. But I don’t think it will win in that category.

I think Kacey Musgraves is getting that for Deeper Well. I think the Recording Academy desperately wants Beyonce to win for Cowboy Carter as a huge middle finger to the Country Music Awards, but country music has such a split personality that they will recognize Musgraves's beautifully subdued work when it comes to the genre award.

My favorite nomination

We all have different tastes. My list of nominees would look radically different from yours and both would probably look nothing like the official slate. As grownups, we learn to accept that and quietly trash the taste and intelligence of all those other fools to ourselves. That’s what makes the few times when one of your unlikely pet favorites does get recognized so special.

This year, that moment for me came when they announced the Best Bluegrass Album nominees. The old legend Del McCoury got one. The new legend Billy Strings got another. Tony Trischka, who has been releasing banjo albums for fifty years, was on the list, as was Sister Sadie, an outstanding all-female band that has barely been around for a decade. They are all worthy. But I am delighted for the fifth nominee, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, a Berklee-trained fiddler who released her debut solo album this year.

If you’ve seen Bronwyn swooping in from the side of Molly Tuttle’s highly acclaimed Golden Highway quintet, you know about her mad fiddle skills. But who knew she could sing too? She’s not going to win – I mean, she’s the only nominee who doesn’t have a hyperlinked Wiki page – but she is going to be around for a long time, and this nomination should help introduce her to a wider audience.

Snubs

I hate to write about snubs unless you are willing to pick out a nominee that should have been dropped. I have already hinted at some of these in the Rock category. The biggest snub I can see is how the Beatles got a Record of the Year nom over Shamboozey’s “A Bar Song.” Personally, I would have chosen LISA over Teddy Swims for Best New Artist. But I suppose K-pop will need to wait a little longer for recognition while B+ level pop/soul keeps on trucking.

Predictions

We’ll close with a few predictions. These are early, knee-jerk reactions, and I reserve the right to change my mind plenty of times before I write anything definitive closer to the actual awards in February.

Album: Cowboy Carter
Record: “Espresso”
Song: “Good Luck, Babe”
New Artist: Chappell Roan & Sabrina Carpenter (tie – which I know is cop-out, but I will be crowing if it actually happens)
Producer: Daniel Nigro
Rock Performance: "Gift Horse" (this is wishful thinking that I really hope comes true)
Rock Album: Saviors (it’s hard to vote against Green Day)
Alt Performance & Album: “Bye Bye” and The Collective (I see real love for Kim Gordon this year)
Americana Album: Trail of Flowers (Sierra Ferrell got five nominations this year, including four for this album)
Best Music Film: (Note – I used to write about movies so I should probably be more up-to-speed on this one. I only saw three of the nominated movies, but I feel like I ought to venture a guess) American Symphony (though I’d prefer to see the Little Steven movie Disciple take the prize)

Obscure trivia for the day: if you type "Rise and fall" into a Google search, the first suggestion you get is Chappell Roan's The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. It comes in just ahead of William L. Shirer's epic history, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This is culturally significant in ways that I can't even begin to fathom.

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