5 stories to look at at 2025 Grammy Awards: NPR

If you were to compile a list of the most frequently asked Grammy-related questions, one of them would certainly boil down to a single word: “Why?” Why try to whittle the music industry’s whole huge output-on across countless genres, by artists from all over the world-down to a handful of industry-appointed “winners”? What is the poenget?

It is best to think of the Grammy Awards as a three and a half hours of infomercial for the music industry. The performances are there to attract eyeballs while showing earlier, contemporary and future stars; The prices are there for rewarding expertise, at least on paper; And both exist to help the industry oint the artists that the industry sees as ambassadors, both at the moment and hopefully far into the future. It is reasonable to question the value of prices in a world shaken by political turmoil and climate disaster. But if you are interested in the music industry-how it sees itself and who it sees as its standard carriers-has grammys a lot to tell you.

Here are five history lines that need to be considered as Sunday’s awards. The CBS Telecast begins at 1 p.m. 20 one, but remember that the brother party of the prices – most of Grammys ’94 categories – will be awarded A webstreamed premiere ceremony It starts four and a half hours earlier.

1. Look to the stars (especially the most assigned star in Grammy History)

It is tempting-and not necessarily inaccurately-to see this year’s Grammys as a clash in demolition-derby style of the titans involving some of the biggest names in pop music.

The leading nominee with 11 nods is Beyoncé, who has won the most trophies in Grammy History (32), while never snagging any of the awards’ Crown Jewels: Record or Album of the Year. This year she is ready for both Cowboy Carter And its diagram-topping single “Texas Hold ‘EM” are strong challengers. If you saw the singer’s Christmas Day “Beyoncé Bowl” Half -Time Show on Netflix, it was essentially a “For your consideration” roll for these prizes. They matter to her – and at this point she will be one of the greatest stories of the night, whether it ends with triumph or another defeat in the most important categories.

Of course, Beyoncé will have to get past some of the music’s biggest names – including Taylor Swift, which is essentially Kansas City bosses for pop stars at this time. ) They should not.)

Beyoncé and Swift are both up to the night’s biggest prizes – albums, record and song of the year – but they are not alone on that front. Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are also ready for all three, and it is certainly possible to end up sweeping if everything breaks a certain way. If that happens, it will mark a coronation that extends far beyond Grammys himself. And of course, Roan and Carpenter are able to pull an even bigger and more prestigious potential sweeping. Which leads us to …

2. A stacked best new artist field

Grammys has 94 categories, but the top four fields are albums, song and record of the year plus best new artist. Before this year, only 13 artists had ever been nominated in all four categories that year, and only two have performed the sweep by winning them all: Christopher Cross in 1981 and Eilish in 2020.

Roan and Carpenter are friends – don’t miss Carpenters cover of Roan’s “Good luck, darling!” If you’ve never heard it – but they’re on a collision course on the way to Sunday. Each would be a heavy favorite for best new artist if she did not turn to a star in the stature of others. Both dominated the pop landscape in 2024.

Even then, they are not the only nominees in this category that have scored colossal commercial breakthroughs in recent months. Benson Boone, Shaboozey and Teddy Swims have each had one of the most inevitable hits in the streaming era with “beautiful things”, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and “Lose Control” ,; All three songs remain in the top 20 many months after they first became hits.

No one else in this category is also not a slouch: Doechii rightly ranks among the fastest rising stars in hip-hop, and Raye is genre-straying Grammy Catnip, which is also nominated for this year’s songwriter (she is a dark horse that could surprise people, even in this category), while Khruangbin sells stadiums, even when the band’s declining catalog questions the idea of ​​what constitutes a “new artist.”

3. Look for Grammys to see their tone

Grammys has had to adapt to tragedies before, whether it is the vulnerable-to-covide telecommunications telecommunications telecommunications 102 and 2022 or 2020 awards, awarded just hours after Kobe Bryant’s death. Each time, Recording Academy adopts a “show to continue” mentality and, yes, on a show, even if it feels obliged to cancel some of the parties that surround the big event it did this year.

In the light of La Wildfires’ influence on the music industry – and in consideration A dimmed ceremony It still gives way to moments of pop stars bril. It will be a difficult balancing action, but Grammys has pulled it off before.

4. If you want to predict a massive, soil-shaking disturbance, try these at size

The top two categories – Album of the Year and Record of the Year – are broken down in a similar way this year: You have a cluster of modern commercial Juggernauts facing one or two Outliers.

In this year’s album, six women who have dominated pop music – Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift – are fighting for no doubt the night’s biggest award. Each has its own constituency, and several have had a monumental Grammy success: Beyoncé is the most decorated Grammy winner in history; Swift has won the album for the year four times; Eilish swept the big four categories in 2020 and then won the Record of the Year (“Everything I Wanted” in 2021) and Song of the Year (“What I was made for?” In 2024) in the ceremonies since. Carpenter, Charli XCX and Roan all broke through in a massive way last year.

Each of the six power centers in this category has a clear sound, but all traffic in commercial pop music. Then you have two records on the left field: André 3000, if instrumental flute odyssey New blue sun Seems pretty out there for Grammy voters, and Jacob Collier who never has so much that broke Billboard Pop diagrams. But Collier who picked up an album of the year nomination to Djesse Vol. 4has won six grammys and been nominated 15 times; Grammys has mushy what he is wasting ever since he came on stage as an irrevocable cheerful wonder child. (There is also a precedent for this kind of jazz-adjacent disturbance: Remember 2011 as they gave the best new artist to Esperanza Spalding over Justin Bieber, Drake, Florence and The Machine and Mumford & Sons?)

A similar polling dynamic could influence the race of the year’s record. Once again you have the same six pop fly women who end the field album of the year, but instead of André 3000 and Jacob Collier, you have two different actions with huge constituencies. Neither should share a track or a constituency with similar stars.

Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” wouldn’t be a huge shock here: The track was one of 2024’s biggest songs, and its shocking pro-la vibs feel in a timely manner. Then there’s the Beatles’ “now and then.” No one will confuse the track-as is dropping a late-’70s John Lennon demo and has been billed as “The Last Beatles Song”-says “Let it be.” But voters in Grammys’ general fields are leaning older, and they have been known to break ties in favor of honored rock sounds.

Would a record for the year win for the Beatles in 2025 qualify as a giant disturbance? Yes, a little. How about an album of the year victory for Jacob Collier? It would be a soil-shaking, especially considering how often (and how notorious) Beyoncé has been denied in this category. But none of them feel impossible.

5. The notions are a major deal (perhaps a larger agreement than the actual prices)

In an era where a given live set could become viral, the effort may not look so high for artists performing on Grammys. But there are many incentives to do something special: they appear in front of the industry’s power brokers. They are measured against peers at the top of their games. In streaming -era, Grammy -Performances often directly affect the factors running Billboard Card location – and revenue. And in a world where streaming services’ algorithms feed listeners music they have already sought out, these streams have a way to multiply themselves.

A few of the great nominees that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are not scheduled to perform this year. The same goes for Kendrick Lamar, who exceeds the Super Bowl and half the following weekend. But the confirmed lineup contains so far most of the night’s biggest names – and many of them are known for their flashy stage representations. Benson Boone and Teddy Swims are sure to bring venous vocal thunder, although only the former is known to incorporate backflips and scroll leaves into his action. Chappell Roan crushed the VMAs and any number of festival appearances. Charli XCX, Doechii, Shakira, Billie Eilish … All of them know how to work a scene. Raye is teeming on the brink of superstardom, and she is exactly the kind of genre-smash-polymath that Grammys loves to showcase.

In other words, if you are inclined to regret not being able to keep up with who the big pop stars are these days, these three and a half hours can help get you trapped in a big way.