2025 Grammy mysteries surrounding Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and The Beatles

In every Grammy season, a lot of questions arise regarding the songs and artists in contention, their eligibility and the overall strategy of their submissions. Although we won’t have much certainty until ballots are out and voting starts, we can take what we do know about the Grammys and their rules to try to answer some burning questions. Let’s take a look at a couple of eligibility mysteries, plus the fate of one big contender’s submissions.

What will Taylor Swift submit to Best Pop Solo Performance?
Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is a massive hit, and so are its songs. However, for the first time since “Lover,” Swift’s lead single is a collaboration: “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone. This means that Swift has a wide range of songs she could submit to Best Pop Solo Performance, a category she’s been nominated in multiple times but has never won. Out of the new songs, the ones that are performing best on streaming are the glitchy-pop tune “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” and the catchy “Down Bad,” the latter of which is doing better on radio so far, which could mean that it’ll appeal to older audiences who stream their music less.

Then again, Swift may also be able to submit something not from “Tortured Poets.” Her 2019 cut “Cruel Summer” has become a huge hit in the past year. She didn’t submit it last year when it was eligible, but she could this year thanks to the release of “Cruel Summer (Live)” in the last weeks of 2023. This live version officially makes the song eligible for performance awards, so Swift might take advantage of that. As for now though, unless the new songs end up dying on the vine, I imagine Swift’s team will prioritize her new material, possibly “Down Bad” due to its radio traction.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Best New Artist eligibility
Carpenter has been bubbling for years now, somewhat popular but without a real defining hit. That has changed in the last few weeks, though, thanks to the success of her summery pop banger “Espresso.” The song has been a monster on streaming platforms, and is likely to give Carpenter her first top-five hit on the Billboard Hot 100 soon. Earlier this year she also achieved success with her cut “Feather,” which peaked recently at number-21. With all this success, and likely a new album down the line, could she squeeze her way into Best New Artist, as this is her first big year on the charts.

Two things will matter here. First, after three unsuccessful Best New Artist submissions an artist is no longer deemed eligible. Has Carpenter thrown her hat in the ring that many times yet? She submitted for the 2024 Grammys, but she didn’t in 2023 (despite her album “Emails I Can’t Send” coming out that season). Since Carpenter has been releasing music since 2014, she might’ve submitted any number of times since then.

Even if Carpenter hasn’t been submitted three times, a screening panel will decide whether or not she is truly a new artist. She might be in luck, though, as artists like Lizzo and Megan Thee Stallion have been allowed to compete despite having put multiple albums out. Plus, “Espresso” and “Feather” being her first top-40 hits might reinforce the argument that, while she’s been in the business for a while, she only achieved mainstream prominence this Grammy season.

The Beatles’s AI-assisted single
Last year the Grammys introduced rules to protect creators from losing out to AI-generated content. Long story short, the rules say that AI-assisted content is eligible, but “a work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any categories,” and “only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration.” That means AI-generated lyrics and melodies are not eligible in songwriting categories, and AI generated voices are not eligible in performance categories. The use of AI also has to be relatively minimal compared to the human-made elements.

This rule might be a deciding factor in the eligibility of a potentially strong contender. The Beatles’s “Now and Then” used AI in the restoration process. Despite this, the track might still be eligible since the vocals aren’t AI-generated. Paul McCartney explained, “It’s all real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing recordings — a process which has gone on for years.” So expect the group to be in contention at the Grammys, unless the use of older archival material disqualifies it.

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