On Feb. 2, 2025, The Recording Academy hosted the 67th annual Grammy’s live from the Cyrpto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California. The show was hosted by Trevor Noah, and featured performances from Billie Eilish, John Legend, Charlie XCX and a surprise performance from The Weeknd. Personally, my favorite performances were from Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan.
Kendrick Lamar won Record of The Year and Song of The Year for “Not Like Us”. While I could not care less about the selection for Song of The Year, a category meant for the songwriters, I think if “LOML” or “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, also by Taylor Swift were nominated, they should have won. “Fortnight” is a really good song but isn’t the best written song on the album in my opinion.
Sabrina Carpenter won Best Pop Vocal Album for her album “Short and Sweet”. I was okay with that selection. She definitely deserved it. I would argue that this should have won over Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poet’s Department” (TTPD). TTPD is a great album, but I could not call it a pop album. It’s more synth-pop or soft rock, depending on the song. But as an overall album, “Short and Sweet” was a great pick.
Chappell Roan won Best New Artist, which I was surprised by because I thought for sure that Sabrina was going to win. While surprising, I liked the selection of Chappell Roan as the winner. No one else nominated had a bigger year than her and Carpenter
The most controversial win of the night happened to be for Best Country Album. Among the nominees were Beyonce, Post Malone, Kasey Musgraves, Lainey Wilson, and Chris Stapleton. The winner was “Cowboy Carter” by Beyonce. This choice outraged many, with viewers claiming that Beyonce is not country. I agree with this statement, which brings me to a personal hot take that I have been sitting on for a while. It is my opinion that Beyonce takes more than just inspiration from Taylor Swift. I find it interesting that her “Homecoming Tour” movie came out a mere two months following Swift’s “The Era’s Tour” movie, along with the fact that she went country after Swift went from country to pop, which I think are no coincidence.
The category that I was most nervous for was Album of The Year. Nominated artists included Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter. Personally, I was really hoping for Taylor Swift to win because her album “The Tortured Poets Department” helped me through a really difficult time in my life I was also hoping for Carpenter and Roan would win as I believe they deserve it as well. Beyonce ended up winning and I was honestly quite disappointed. Not just because of how much Taylor’s album helped me through everything, and how much it means to me, but because Beyonce’s album honestly isn’t very good. In my opinion, “Saviors” by Green Day should have been nominated for Album of The Year over Beyonce’s “Cowboy Carter”.
Let’s talk for a second about the Grammy categories, and why I think the current arrangement should be changed. . “Best Pop Vocal Album” should be renamed to “Best Pop Album” because they are looking at the most “poppy” album, as opposed to the best vocals on a pop album. Who really knows the difference between “Song of the Year” and “Record of the Year”? Well, let me tell you. As I alluded to earlier in this article, “Song of the Year”, was an award for the songwriters of the song, as opposed to “Record of the Year”, which is for the actual production and the song as a whole. They should rename “Song of the Year” to “Songwriters of the Year” to make it easier for the viewers to distinguish the difference between the two.
Overall, this year’s show wasn’t very good. I mean sure it had some good performances, and they honored late One Direction member Liam Payne in the “In Memoriam” part of the show, but overall, it sucked.
