The biggest ceremony in music is almost here. The 68th Annual Grammy Awards are set to take place on Feb. 1 in Los Angeles and feature a slew of nominees across all 95 of its categories. This year, the “Big Four” categories, Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist, are as contentious as ever, featuring blockbuster names like Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter and Bad Bunny. Here’s a look at all of the nominees in each of these four categories, along with a few personal picks.
Record of the Year, a category which awards the performance and general studio recording of a song, is the first of the big four categories on offer this year. Last year, Kendrick Lamar’s triumphant diss track “Not Like Us” won, making it the second rap song ever to receive the award. This year’s contenders here are strong, like Chappell Roan’s “The Subway,” which is one of the most impressively produced songs of the year, Bad Bunny’s “DtMF,” one of the many major hits from the Super Bowl LX headliner’s latest album and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild,” which is undoubtedly one of the lead contenders to walk away with this award.
Other songs here aren’t as compelling of choices, like Doechii’s surprise hit “Anxiety,” which completely lacks compelling production or a potent performance, and Billie Eilish’s “WILDFLOWER,” a song that, while fantastic, was initially released in May 2024 and is only eligible for this award because it was rereleased as a single in February 2025. But Lamar’s blockbuster collaboration with SZA, “luther,” is definitely a standout choice. If your song has five producers, it’s bound to be sonically pleasant, and that’s exactly what “luther” is. The glittering strings that back Lamar and SZA’s voices, along with the ever-present Luther Vandross sample and that subtle bass tone, set the perfect tone for this song.
Album of the Year is a fascinating category this year. Beyoncé took home the award last year for “COWBOY CARTER,” making her the first Black female winner of the award since Lauryn Hill won for “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill” in 1999. This year, three separate rap albums have been nominated for Album of the Year: Tyler, The Creator’s “CHROMAKOPIA,” Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” and Pusha T and Malice’s triumphant comeback album as Clipse, “Let God Sort Em Out.” If any of those three were to win, that album would join “The Miseducation Of…” and OutKast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” as the only rap albums to ever win the award.
Those three fantastic hip-hop projects are joined by more mainstream pop acts, like Sabrina Carpenter, whose seventh full-length album “Man’s Best Friend” helped her break the record for being the most streamed female act on Spotify in a single day at the time, and more left-field contenders, like Leon Thomas’ third album, “MUTT,” which spawned the hit single of the same name.
Most of these albums, with the exception of Justin Bieber’s “SWAG,” which, for a contemporary soul album, feels particularly devoid of any emotion or personality, are quite strong, but “CHROMAKOPIA” quite honestly blows all the other nominees out of the water. Its genre-bending sonics and knife-point lyrical precision proved to be a career best for Tyler, The Creator, who delves into topics and sonics that he’d previously shied away from. It’s the most personal project by one of the most fascinating personalities in music, and shatters the glass that separates his public persona from his private life.
While most of the songs nominated in this category are also nominated for Record of the Year (with the exception of HUNTR/X’s “Golden,” from hit the movie “KPop Demon Hunters”), Song of the Year, which was also won by Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” last year, focuses on the songwriting instead of the recording itself. The songs on offer, with the exception of Doechii’s “Anxiety,” which is a poor representation of the Tampa rapper’s creative abilities, are certainly impressive, but the category this year lacks a true standout pick.
There are impressive songs here, of course: Carpenter’s “Manchild” is certainly one of the top contenders for this category, and Carpenter is nothing if not a good writer of pop songs, and, say what you want about the movie, but “Golden” is certainly an impressive song from a writing perspective and deserves a spot. As it stands, the strongest song in this category is the same as in Record of the Year. Lamar and SZA are two of the best songwriters in the modern day, after all, and they flex those muscles on “luther,” a tender love song that blossoms into pure bliss by the end.
Best New Artist is a confusing category. A lot of the artists nominated are not “new.” Artists like Leon Thomas and The Marias have been releasing music for almost a decade. What the Recording Academy is looking for in this category is an artist who has entered the cultural zeitgeist during the eligibility period, which is mostly true for all of these artists.
Last year, Chappell Roan took home the award off the back of the success of her debut album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.” This year, the names are just as notable. Global pop group KATSEYE’s hit single “Gabriela” has been streamed over 600 million times on Spotify, Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” peaked at second place on the Billboard Hot 100 and sombr’s debut album “I Barely Know Her” broke into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 upon release.
Leon Thomas, whose fantastic single, “MUTT,” has been streamed almost 400 million times on Spotify, seems to be the perfect artist for the Recording Academy to award, and certainly is a strong contender to win. The strongest act here, however, is TikTok-star-turned-pop-iconoclast Addison Rae, whose fantastic eponymous debut album was a breath of fresh air at a time where it felt like popular music was only becoming more and more stale. Loaded with fantastic cuts like “Headphones On” and “Fame Is A Gun,” “Addison” is a truly fantastic pop record and pushes Rae far ahead of the rest of the pack.
Have a different opinion or feel strongly about the awards? Send us an email at [email protected] to give us your thoughts.
