Grammys 2025: Top nominees include Beyonce, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift

Beyoncé or Taylor Swift? Post Malone or Kendrick Lamar? The Beatles or Rolling Stones? Sabrina Carpenter or Chappell Roan? Dolly Parton or former President Jimmy Carter?

The list of nominees announced Friday morning for the 67th annual Grammy Awards is filled with expected and unexpected contenders alike, along with a record number of women artists who account for a majority of the nominees — six out of eight — in the major categories. The highest profile match-up, and the most anticipated, pits Beyonce, who has a field-leading 11 nominations against Swift, who has six.

The two megastars will compete for votes for Album, Record and Song of the Year honors, although it’s possible the wins could instead go to Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter or Chappell Roan, who are also nominated in those same three categories.

Carpenter, 25, and Roan, 26, are both Grammy-nominee newbies and have six nominations apiece. Eilish, 22, has won nine Grammys since her surprise Album of the Year victory in 2020. In a music year that was largely dominated commercially by pop, their nominations seem very much in tune with the times. A list of nominees in the highest-profile of the 94 categories appears later in this article.

Of course, the biggest winner at the Feb. 2 telecast of the Grammys — which will air on CBS and Paramount+ from Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena — could end up being Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Lamar, rapper-singer-turned-country-music-artist Malone or English dance-pop star Charli xcx.

Each of them has seven nominations and Lamar’s Drake-dis track, “Not Like Us,” topped Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs for a record 21 weeks this year.

But should either Beyoncé, 43, or Swift, 34, prevail, their victories will be historic in more ways than one at the 2025 edition of the music world’s most prestigious annual awards ceremony. This is the first time the two have both been nominated for Album of the Year since 2010, when Swift’s “Fearless” won out over Beyoncé’s “I Am … Sasha Fierce.”

Swift’s Album of the Year nomination this time around for “The Tortured Poet’s Department” makes her the first woman artist to be nominated seven times in this category. That breaks her previous tie with Barbra Streisand, who this year is vying for Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling honors for “My Name is Barbra.”

This also marks the second consecutive year and fourth time overall Swift has been nominated for Album, Record and Song of the Year. This year saw Swift win her fourth Album of the Year Grammy (for “Midnights”), a triumph that enabled her to surpass three-time Album of the Year winners Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Frank Sinatra.

Beyoncé’s Album of the Year nomination for her country music-fueled “Cowboy Carter” may be even more significant. It marks the fifth time she has been nominated in this category, after falling short of a win each of the four previous times.

Her latest nomination gives Beyoncé the most Album of the Year nods for any Black artist in Grammy history, after previously having been tied for that designation with Lamar and Kanye West.

Moreover, Beyoncé’s 11 nominations this year — which include five in the Best Country and American Roots Music categories, two in Pop categories and one in the Rap category — make her the most-nominated Grammy artist ever, with a career total of 99 nominations. Beyoncé’s 32 previous wins, four of which came in 2023, make her the all-time Grammy-winner.

But only three Black women artists have ever won the coveted Album of the Year award — the most recent being Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” in 1999. The fact Beyoncé has yet to win in this category prompted her husband, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, to call out the Grammys when he was honored during this year’s telecast.

Beyoncé herself weighed in with “Sweet Honey Buckin’,” a standout song from her “Cowboy Carter” album. Its lyrics find her pointedly declaring: “A-O-T-Y, I ain’t win (Let’s go!) / I ain’t got stung by them / I take that (stuff) on the chin…”

“Sweet Honey Buckin’ ” did not get nominated in any Grammy categories. But “Cowboy Carter” earned Beyoncé a nomination for Best Country Album, while three songs from the album earned her nominations in three other Grammy categories for country music. This could be viewed by some as a riposte to Beyoncé being shut out altogether when the 2024 Country Music Association Awards nominations were announced in September.

Then again, a plethora of Grammy nominations does not ensure success. Beyoncé had nine nominations in 2017, but went home with just two wins in minor categories. And so it goes.

It is unlikely, but not impossible, that this time around Grammy votes for Beyoncé and Swift could offset each other. If so, Roan, Carpenter, Eilish or Charli xcx will have a better chance to win the Album of the Year award. Roan and Carpenter, who now has six solo albums to her credit, are also Best New Artist nominees.

Charli xcx, 32, had a career-defining album this year with “Brat.”  And few young artists have generated as much buzz this year as the frothy Carpenter, a former Disney TV star who performs Sunday at San Diego’s Pechanga Arena, or Roan, a queer-pop cult favorite-turned vibrant mainstream pop sensation. Carpenter and Roan were each strong contenders in this year’s “song of the summer” sweepstakes for, respectively, Carpenter’s “Espresso” and Roan’s “Hot to Go.”

The two other Album of the Year nominees, Jacob Collier and OutKast co-founder André 3000, both appear to be decided longshots for a win here. André 3000, who has pivoted from rapping to playing flute, is also a contender in the Best Instrumental Composition category. That nomination came for his wryly titled, 12-minute-plus piece, “I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time.”

The likelihood of an Album of the Year win by one of the six female nominees, all of whom are also vying in other categories, may be bolstered by a relatively recent development. The Recording Academy — under whose auspices the Grammys are presented — has added 3,000 women as new voting members over the past few years.

Even more telling, 66 percent of the academy’s 13,000 voting members have come on board in the past five years, a move designed to counter longstanding charges that too many of the voters were too old, too white, too male and too conservative in their musical tastes. Or, as academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said in a San Diego Union-Tribune interview in late January: “You always want to have the right voters voting in a knowledgeable way with an understanding of the genres.”

Women artists are the dominant 2025 nominees for Album of the Year and Record of The Year. They also dominate more than a dozen other categories, including Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Latin Pop Album, Best R&B Performance, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best R&B Song, Best Americana Performance and Best Folk Album.

All of the 2025 Grammy nominees were announced during a Friday morning livestream on live.grammy.com and YouTube by Mason and an array of artists. They included everyone from Kylie Minogue and Paramore singer Hayley Williams to Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong (who announced the contenders for Album of the Year and Record of the Year honors), and comedian Jim Gaffigan (who in February memorably hosted the Grammys’  MusiCares all-star concert saluting Jon Bon Jovi).

A number of acclaimed albums released this fall — including The Cure’s “Songs of a Lost World,” Laura Marling’s “Patterns in Repeat” and Tyler, The Creator’s “Cromakopia” — came out too late for Grammy consideration. The period of eligibility is for recordings released between Sept. 16, 2023, and Aug. 30, 2024. A total of 20,309 recordings were submitted for nomination consideration.

“It was an incredible year in music and these nominations reflect the work of a voting body that is more representative of the music community than ever before,” Mason said in a statement released Friday morning.

Yet, while many of the nominees in the major 2025 Grammy categories are young, there are some notable exceptions.

The Record of the Year contenders include “Now and Then” The Beatles, the legendary English quartet that disbanded in 1970 and saw two of its members, John Lennon and George Harrison, die in 1980 and 2001, respectively. “Now and Then” is also nominated in the Best Rock Performance category. The song was written by Lennon in the late 1970s and remained unfinished until last year, when the two remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney, now 82, and Ringo Starr, now 84, added new parts. Starr’s next album, an all-country affair, is due out in January.

The Rolling Stones, whose three senior members have a collective age of 238, are nominated in the Best Rock Album category. That nod came for “Hackney Diamonds,” the 62-year-old band’s first new studio album since 2005.

But surviving members of The Beatles and Stones are not the oldest 2025 Grammy nominees. That distinction goes to former President Jimmy Carter, who celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1 and voted in this week’s presidential election.

Carter is nominated in the Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for “Last Sundays In Plains: A Centennial Celebration.” The other nominees in this category include two Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, George Clinton and Dolly Parton.

A number of former and current San Diegans also earned nominations. They include singer, songwriter and SDSU alum Gregory Porter, whose “Christmas Wish,” is up for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album honors; fellow singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, whose “Hell’s Kitchen” is a Best Musical Theater contender; and sitar master Anoushka Shankar, whose “Chapter II: How Dark It is Before Dawn” is a Best New Age Album nominee. She is also vying in the Best Global Music Performance category for “A Rock Somewhere,” which features her collaborating with Jacob Collier and Varijashree Venugopal.

Pearl Jam is nominated for Best Rock Album and best Rock Song, both for “Dark Matter.” The band’s members include drummer and San Diego native Matt Cameron and two former San Diegans, lead singer Eddie Vedder and guitarist Mike McCready.

Here are the 2025 Grammy Awards nominees in the most high profile categories. The full list of nominees can be seen at grammy.com/awards.

Album of the Year

André 3000, “New Blue Sun”

Beyoncé, “Cowboy Carter”

Sabrina Carpenter, “Short n’ Sweet”

Charli xcx, “Brat”

Jacob Collier, “Djesse Vol, 4”

Billie EIlish, “Hit Me Hard and Soft”

Chappell Roan, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”

Taylor Swift, “The Tortured Poets Department”

Record Of The Year

“Now And Then,”  The Beatles

“Texas Hold ‘Em,”  Beyoncé

“Espresso,”  Sabrina Carpenter

“360,” Charli xcx

“Birds of a Feeather,” Billie Eilish

“Not Like Us,” Kendrick Lamar

“Good Luck, Babe!” Chappell Roan

“Fortnight,” Taylor Swift, featuring Post Malone

Song Of The Year

“A Bar Song (Tipsy)” – Sean Cook, Jerrel Jones, Joe Kent, Chibueze Collins Obinna, Nevin Sastry & Mark Williams, songwriters (Shaboozey)

“Birds of a Feather” – Billie Eilish O’Connell & Finneas O’Connell, songwriters (Billie Eilish)

“Die With A Smile” – Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II, James Fauntleroy, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars & Andrew Watt, songwriters (Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars)

“Fortnight” – Jack Antonoff, Austin Post & Taylor Swift, songwriters (Taylor Swift, featuring Post Malone)

“Good Luck, Babe!” – Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, Daniel Nigro & Justin Tranter, songwriters (Chappell Roan)

“Not Like Us” – Kendrick Lamar, songwriter (Kendrick Lamar)

“Please Please Please” – Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff & Sabrina Carpenter, songwriters (Sabrina Carpenter)

“Texas Hold ‘Em” – Brian Bates, Beyoncé, Elizabeth Lowell Boland, Megan Bülow, Nate Ferraro & Raphael Saadiq, songwriters (Beyoncé)

Best New Artist

Benson Boone

Sabrina Carpenter

Doechii

Khruangbin

RAYE

Chappell Roan

Shaboozey

Teddy Swims