FEATURE:
The Digital Mixtape
IN THIS PHOTO: Charli XCX
Picks from the GRAMMY Nominations
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ONE of the biggest dates in the music calendar…
we will discover who walks away from prestigious GRAMMY awards in February. The nominees were revealed this week. There are some heavy-hitting artists lining up against some newcomers. It is a year when female artists are dominating. It reflects the way the scene is shifting. Women are very much at the top. I wanted to take a selection of nominees and combine them in a playlist. Covering some of the main categories. Variety reacted to the news of a terrific year for nominees. Some incredible work being included:
“Beyoncé just earned herself another sash. As numbers go, she is easily the queen of the rodeo that is the 2025 Grammy nominations, racking up 11 nominations for her “Cowboy Carter” album and its attendant singles. That’s a personal high for her, besting the 10 nods she got back in 2009.
But Beyoncé has to share the headlines coming out of Friday morning’s announcement. Because she is just one of five powerhouse women who are nominated in all three of the Grammys‘ top general categories this year — record, song and album of the year. Joining her in being nominated for all three of those major prizes are Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
Three other artists picked up nominations in two of the three top categories and accrued major nomination tallies: Charli XCX, Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar.
Following Beyoncé’s leading 11 nods, it’s Eilish, Lamar, Malone and Charli XCX who have a four-way tie for the second-largest number of nominations this year, with seven noms each. Close behind with six nominations apiece are Swift, Roan and Carpenter.
(Scroll down to see the full list of nominations in 94 categories.)
Is this the Grammys’ year of the woman”? You’d have to say yes, with female artists claiming six out of the eight nominations for both album of the year and record of the year. But then, last year was really the year of the woman, with seven out of eight spots taken in those categories. In other words, this “stepping up” has been the norm and not the exception for several successive years now.
The dominance of all these women on the charts as well as in the larger pop culture made predicting the Grammys a little easier this year, for many. (Variety’s predictions a month ago were largely on the nose, getting six out of eight nominees right in each of the four general-field categories.)
It was only when the Recording Academy’s voters deigned to recognize men in top categories that inclusions occurred that were less expected… if not head-scratchers. Andre 3000’s album of the year nomination, for his instrumental free-range-flute album “New Blue Sun,” is sure to set off a rash of WTF comments; although the collection certainly had its defenders, there was not a prognosticator in the world who considered that even a dark horse. The sewn-together Beatles track “Now and Then,” which is nominated for record of the year, had at least popped up in the conversations, as a possibility to fill the surprise-veteran slot taken by ABBA two years ago”.
To celebrate and highlight the brilliant work that has been shortlisted this year, below is a small selection of the artists included. From The Beatles through to Charli XCX and Billie Eilish, below are some terrific tracks. The GRAMMY Awards are so sought-after, so it will be interesting to see who walks away with prizes. These are some of the terrific artists who could walk away with a GRAMMY…
IN February.