The 2025 Grammy Awards nominations have been announced, and as with every year, there are several snubs and several musical artists probably not deserving of the nods. When an awards show has 94 categories, there is bound to be some fluff. Maybe the hope is that nominating a well-known act will get the artist to perform on the broadcast.
The Grammys are ultimately about the money, of course. Sure, there is a hint of integrity when nominating the musical artists, but the academy wants its dollars. Networks pay the Academy top dollar to broadcast the awards ceremony (the Grammys will be moving to ABC in 2027.)
If a popular band can be stuck somewhere on the nominations, it would be all the better. Giving a Grammy nod to Of Montreal might only get one or two people to watch, but nominating a boy band from the 1990s? That's TV gold! Oddly, with one of the musical artists below, the Grammys might have wondered who might show up (they are likely hoping it will be Sir Paul).
Three bands that the 2025 Grammy Award nominations gave too much attention to
Rolling Stones
There is nothing wrong with the Rolling Stones' newest album, Hackney Diamonds, but it has no business being nominated as Best Rock Album. The truth is that the Grammys have no backbone when it comes to rock music. To be real, the academy is all about pop music and rock is left for the people hovering in the shadows of the dimmest part of the building. That's the way rock should be, of course, but if the academy is going to have categories for metal and rock, they should own it.
Five of the seven nominees for Rock Album have been making music for 25 years or more. Heck, Jack White is the "youngest" of those groups, and he is by no means "new." His album, No Name, is terrific and worthy of being nominated, but the Stones' album is not. Likely, academy voters saw the name "Rolling Stones" and went, "Yes!" without having heard the new record. The fact that the band only got one nomination and nothing for Best Rock Song implies the last sentence is true.
The Beatles
The Beatles might be the greatest band in the history of music, but their "new" song should not be anywhere close to a Grammy nomination. The tune is called "Now and Then" and was not even supposed to be a "Beatles" track. John Lennon wrote the song in 1977, well after the band had broken up. If anything, the tune should have been a Lennon solo piece, but even he did not include it on any of his solo albums.
The song is fine. The issue is that AI is used to add most of the sounds, and some of the harmonies are from older Beatles songs. It seems unfair that a song could be nominated for Record of the Year and be the musical equivalent of the Frankenstein monster: A piece here and a piece there. Clearly, the academy just wanted the name of the Beatles associated with the 2025 awards.
*NSYNC
Well, the Grammys had to do something, right? After all, one of the biggest boy bands ever gets back together for a short bit, so they have to be given a nomination, right? At least, academy voters were smart about hiding where they put *NSYNC's song from the soundtrack to Trolls Band Together, "Better Place," as the song is listed in the visual media category.
The song did not deserve any Grammy love. Clearly, the voters like a bunch of nostalgia nominated a lot of older bands and had some boy band love in their musical hearts, so they felt moved to include Justin Timberlake and the boys. The Grammy Awards probably hope *NSYNC will perform and hence, the nomination.