Grammys 2025 — The good, the bad and the ugly (Part 2)

We’re back for some more reflections on the Grammy nominations list, following on from the first part posted earlier in the week — five more each for my selection of good picks, bad choices, and ugly omissions at the hand of the Recording Academy. In general with this, I’m sticking away from the truly obvious takes in favour of focussing on more substantive and/or niche talking points — to take an example from part 1, we all knew Sabrina Carpenter would be a prominent figure this year, but more unexpected (and well-judged) was the splitting of her Song and Record of the Year nominations between two separate tracks. With all of that said, do check out last installment to get a feel for the format, and we’ll continue on here with part two.

A GOOD PICK: Kim Gordon

Sonic Youth never picked up so much as a nomination for a Grammy during their impactful 30-year span together, but 13 years after their dissolution, the band’s bassist-guitarist-vocalist powerhouse Kim Gordon snags two nominations for her phenomenal second solo studio album The Collective. With an Alternative Music Performance nod for opener ‘BYE BYE’, and a second in Alternative Music Album for the whole project, it’s heartening to see such an unabashedly eccentric take on noise rock and hip-hop being recognised, particularly when seen in light of the longstanding neglect of Gordon’s past work by the Academy. There’s an argument to be made that it should really be in conversation for the Rap categories, but… let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, shall we? (Oh god, it’s IGOR all over again.)

A BAD CHOICE: Ignoring some of the composers of the Star Wars Outlaws soundtrack

A finicky one this may be, but still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Star Wars Outlaws is one of the games nominated for the verbose Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media category, and I think it’s a good pick (it’s actually a very good category this year all around, in my opinion). What I don’t like is seeing only Wilbert Roget II’s name listed as composer in the nomination. While much of the soundtrack is indeed credited solely to him, this ignores the not-insignificant contributions to the score provided by Jon Everist (perhaps best known for working on soundtracks for the Shadowrun franchise) and Kazuma Jinnouchi (co-composer for the anime film Suzume, amongst others); the cover of the release even credits them plainly. Multiple composers were cited last year for games like Hogwarts Legacy and Stray Gods, so their omissions here feel a little inexplicable, even if Roget’s work makes up a majority of the soundtrack. Maybe this is Academy policy as far as ‘additional music’ is concerned — if so, it’s pretty crap policy. (Does this technically count as an omission?)

AN UGLY OMISSION: Javelin (Sufjan Stevens)

Javelin very well may be Sufjan’s best album. Certainly it’s one of his most emotional and intense affairs, easily standing amongst the peaks of his output. And yet, as with basically everything else Stevens has done, it is absent from the Grammy listings this year. The guy’s actually only ever been nominated once, in Song for Visual Media for the achingly gorgeous ‘Mystery of Love’ from Call Me By Your Name. Folk or Alternative, either field would warrant its inclusion, along with nods for such highlights as ‘A Running Start’, ‘Will Anybody Ever Love Me?’ or ‘Shit Talk’ — Recording Package too, or Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package if you included the accompanying photo-book. I don’t know how this missed out — this just feels wilfully blind at this point, and more the shame for it.

A GOOD PICK: WILLOW

Knowing it’s here, I’d have liked to see it in conversation for a few genre field awards, but still, two Grammy nominations for what is arguably WILLOW’s strongest and most unique release to date is heartening. WILLOW’s empathogen picked up a tasteful nod for Engineered Album, Non-Classical, while her work on groovy, meter-shifting single ‘b i g f e e l i n g s’ nabbed a second for Arrangement (Instruments and Vocals). I had fully expected this album to go completely unnoticed as her previous work had done, so to get a twofer for one of my favourite albums this year is a very, very good thing to see indeed.

A BAD CHOICE: just… so much of how The Tortured Poets Department showed up

I said my piece about Jack Antonoff in the first half of the list, and my thoughts on TTPD are many and mixed, but I do still feel it was worthy of some RA love this year, let’s set that out to start. What confuses me is how and where it shows up — three of its nominations are for ‘Fortnight’, the other two for the album itself. And … sure, ‘Fortnight’ deserves to be in conversation, being the big single, the big video, and one of the project’s subtlest, strongest efforts. But there were other songs from the project more deserving of Song of the Year attention if we’re going on the basis of sheer songwriting quality (‘Peter’? ‘The Prophecy’? ‘So Long London’?), and I wouldn’t have even minded them showing up in genre categories too. And as mentioned in Part 1, Taylor’s nomination in Pop Duo/Group is as a feature on Gracie Abrams’ ‘us.’, leaving ‘Fortnight’ (as well as the brilliant Florence + the Machine collab ‘Florida!!!’) out of arguably its most obvious category. And yet it’s still supposedly in for a shot in the General Field? A very messy nomination pack to continue TTPD’s frustrating but ever-interesting time in the public eye.

AN UGLY OMISSION: Critterland (Willi Carlisle)

This one might have been wishful thinking, but I was hoping to see some love for Willi Carlisle in this year’s Country and Roots fields. Critterland may be a heavy thing, and despite the sardonicism Carlisle does play things largely straight, which can leave the record a little stuck in an emotional middle-ground, but the guy’s a grade-A songwriter and the record represents some of his best work. Field 5 has had a good year, but still, one always can hope for work of this caliber to find its way in over a couple of the less remarkable entries around. It’s particularly noticeable when, for example, you see that American Roots Performance is a nomination short this year. It would have cost nothing to put a song as deserving as ‘Two-Headed Lamb’ in, you know?

A GOOD PICK: Morten Lindberg’s appearances through Fields 9 and 10

Another take from the classical end of the nominations to pair with the one from the first half. Morten Lindberg was until 2020 the most-nominated person at the Grammys without a win, and even now, he’s sitting at the eye-watering ratio of 38 nominations to a single gilt gramophone. But he is a first-class producer, and he’s got a good chance to add wins this year, with two separate projects up for nomination in the Immersive Audio category and a nomination himself for Classical Producer of the Year. His portfolio is the slightest of the six Classical Producer nominations, but all three cited albums are amongst the most accomplished and proficient bits of production work of the entire Classical field. Shoe-in for nominations he might be, but still, brilliant it is to see him here again.

A BAD CHOICE: Khruangbin

I love Khruangbin. Really, I do. But I don’t think A LA SALA is amongst their best output and their nomination off the back of it for ‘Best New Artist’ feels inexplicable. Sabrina in this pack is one thing (yes, Short n’ Sweet is her SIXTH record, but anyone pretending her pop prominence was considerable before this year is either lying or a super-fan), but A LA SALA wasn’t wildly more successful than their 2020 record Mordechai (it actually charted lower in many places) — hell, their most streamed song is from one of their 2020 collaborative EPs with Leon Bridges. It’s not been a noticeably big year for them, and I just don’t know whether their comparative popularity really justifies their inclusion here; love that they’ve finally got a Grammy nod to their name but I’d rather it have been anything else, or at least a different year.

AN UGLY OMISSION: TYLA

Tyla’s win of the inaugural African Music Performance Grammy for her smash-hit ‘Water’ last year was to be celebrated, making her the youngest African Grammy winner in history, and it boded well for both future success and more nominations come the release of the full album. But Tyla’s TYLA is notably absent from proceedings this year. While I think in some corners it does pale in comparison to e.g. Tems’ Born in the Wild, which has deservedly found three nominations across both Global and R&B fields, it’s still a very strong amapiano record, and popular cuts from it such as ‘ART’ or ‘Truth or Dare’ should definitely have been in conversation for at least the African Music Performance category.

A GOOD PICK: Saltburn

Whatever you think of the film, Saltburn’s music is undoubtedly wonderful. I wouldn’t have minded a nod for Anthony Willis’ pitch-perfect score too, but the compilation soundtrack of 2000s bangers assembled to underpin other portions of the film has helped fix it in the collective cultural memory — notably including Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s deservedly re-celebrated ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’, which became one of the biggest hits of the 2023/24 winter. It’s a judiciously-assembled set of songs that create a hazy, nostalgic yet undeniably sleazy audio portrait of the early-/mid-2000s that perfectly matches everything Fennell and co. aim for in the film.

A BAD CHOICE: The Bob Marley film’s second soundtrack (particularly in the Reggae category)

Another film-music mention, though not in the Visual Media categories this time. Don’t get me wrong, I think One Love’s soundtrack EP is pretty good, with some solid covers of seven of the greatest cuts from Bob Marley and the Wailers’ discographies. The problem is, six of those songs also exist in their original versions on the first soundtrack of the film, and it’s not a controversial thing to say that it’s hard for the covers to compete. Kris Bowers’ score to the film also outperforms the EP’s cuts sometimes, and when you consider that the Wailers themselves have their own Reggae Album nomination for their newest record Evolution, the whole thing feels a bit of a ‘making up the numbers’ pick. Also, a soundtrack’s presence in a genre category makes the Challengers score’s absence from the Dance/Electronic awards even more starkly noticeable.

AN UGLY OMISSION: ANY love for Magdalena Bay

Oh Imaginal Disk, how they failed you. This omission reminds me a lot of Mitski’s complete snub last year (yes, The Land Is Inhospitable WAS in last year’s eligibility period by one day, which is why I have refrained from bemoaning its absence in this list) — a beloved and highly-acclaimed album that proves something of a breakout into the mainstream for the artist, was celebrated across the online alternative sphere, and then was completely overlooked to the shock and chagrin of many. It’s not just one of the best albums of the year, it’s one of the best synth-pop albums of the decade, and was more than deserving of recognition in the genre and even general categories. Hell, let’s be wild, even a music video nod for the trippy vaporwave aesthetics of the ‘Image’ visual would have been more deserving than some of what’s there.

A GOOD PICK: Lalah Hathaway

One of the best voices working right now in the popular sphere, Lalah Hathaway is no stranger to the Grammys, with 5 wins accrued over 12 deserved nominations. Still, ever the pleasure to see her recognised in the R&B field this year for her brilliant VANTABLACK and its song ‘No Lie’ featuring Michael MacDonald. Looking at the other contenders in those categories, R&B Album and Traditional R&B Performance, Lalah feels like a very strong contender in both; album in particular, with VANTABLACK being up there amongst the strongest releases of the year full stop. A warm and inventive project that’s testament as always to her skill and dexterity — very glad to see this indeed.

A BAD CHOICE: Basically the whole Comedy category

ANOTHER Dave Chappelle nomination? AND with Ricky Gervais too. Ugh. Not only did The Dreamer peddle more of Chappelle’s insensitive-to-incendiary trans material to little effect, but Gervais’ Armageddon had a particularly tasteless segment about cancer patients. I just don’t know why the RA continues to support this kind of grim punching-down. The other three nominations are less actively unpleasant, though it’s still a little baffling. Jim Gaffigan’s The Prisoner is his usual innocuous, slightly silly and relatable observational fare, but isn’t actually recorded brilliantly to my ears; Nikki Glaser’s Someday You’ll Die is sardonic and wry but doesn’t really rock my socks either. Trevor Noah’s Where Was I is without a doubt the standout here, patient and poised though it can be, but all in all, a very strange and uncomfortable set of bedfellows in this category.

AN UGLY OMISSION: A Producer of the Year nomination for A. G. Cook

So brat is undoubtedly one of the most iconic releases of the year, right? We can all agree that. And a lot of brat’s impact is undoubtedly down to its slick, energetic and wide-reaching production. Yet one of its principle producers, the PC Music icon and long-time Charli collaborator A. G. Cook, doesn’t get a nod for Producer of the Year? Not that it could be his only portfolio credit, you know — there’s also his own sprawling triple album Britpop (pictured), alongside recent work on tracks by the likes of Fujii Kaze, Hikaru Utada, Caroline Polachek (another snub for ‘Starburned and Unkissed’ here!), Troye Sivan, Hannah Diamond, Kesha and Ilsey. He’s one of the most distinctive and iconic producers working at the moment, and although his work across brat and Renaissance has seen four nominations, a Producer nod of his own is surely warranted.

AND A BONUS UGLY OMISSION: STILL. NO. K-POP.

The Academy’s continued reticence to nominate much at all out of Asia in general is an embarrassment (and believe me, this year is better than it usually is), but as with last year, the complete absence of K-pop is particularly egregious given how prominent this scene continutes to be in the West. While perhaps the number of sheer breakout successes this year pales a bit in comparison to last year’s cohort, there have still been great releases from aespa, NewJeans, SEVENTEEN, tripleS and several of the alumnae from both LOONA and BLACKPINK, let alone continued success from the BTS boys during the group’s hiatus. Inexplicable as it always is — the RA needs to do better.

Well, there we are, another year of joy and disappointment done. With the main ceremony still a quarter of a year away, I’m sure some of these opinions are bound to change — but where would the fun be if they didn’t? Anyway, until the next,

AC.

The Grammys 2025 — the good, the bad and the ugly

• Part 1
• Part 2

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