Kendrick, No Carti, Album Art, and Another Year of Grammy Nominations 

The nominees were kinda predictable.

Grammys…it’s lowkey giving copy-and-paste, babes. The Recording Academy clearly did not stretch themselves this year, sticking with their usual rotation of heavyweights. It reflects the year in music overall though with some bright spots, but not exactly the most adventurous or exploratory list we’ve ever seen.

Song of the Year was… a choice.

The Song of the Year lineup feels like names were pulled from a hat, but honestly, that’s a perfect snapshot of where music is right now. We didn’t have a real “song of the summer,” no unifying viral smash, no single track everyone’s mom, dentist, and Lyft driver agreed on. With taste more scattered than ever, it seems like voters basically shrugged and nominated whatever. The biggest shock is still that there’s no Ravyn Lenae “Love Me Not,” which many saw as one of the year’s strongest compositions.

No Playboi Carti nominations is actually wild.

Carti dropped Music and instantly broke records. One hundred and thirty-four million Spotify streams on day one (the seventh-most-streamed album ever in 24 hours) and a No. 1 Billboard 200 debut, with 298,000 units—the biggest rap opening of 2025. It was the moment tons of casual listeners finally “got” why Carti’s a star. Culturally and commercially, he dominated. Yet the Academy acted like he didn’t exist. Somebody’s absolutely playing in our face.

Kendrick Lamar might be in the middle of another victory lap.

Nine nominations—including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance—feels like Kendrick clocked back in just to remind everyone the run is still going. No clue if he’ll sweep this year, but it would absolutely insane if he did. 

Best album cover is becoming the category.

The newly introduced Best Album Cover award has already turned into music lover’s favorite debate club. Wet Leg, Perfume Genius, Bad Bunny, Djo, and Tyler, the Creator made the first-ever shortlist. Fans are arguing already about everything from aesthetics to snubs. Take, for example, Sabrina Carpenter’s highly controversial cover of Man’s Best Friend that everyone made a TikTok video explaining their position about. But controversy does not equal quality, and the voters clearly kept that in mind.

Swifties… there is a deadline. 

Taylor Swift’s zero nominations have nothing to do with politics or sabotage. It’s the calendar. This year’s eligibility window ran from Aug. 31, 2024 to Aug. 30, 2025, and Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl dropped on Oct.3, 2025. Yet every year, people act like the deadline is a mythological creature.

Best new artist does NOT equal newborn.

Every year, people relearn that “new” really means “breakthrough" with this category. That’s why The Marías, who have been around since 2016, still qualified. It’s not really about starting; it’s about when an artist has truly arrived to capture the industry’s attention. 

Bad Bunny deserves to sweep, actually. 

This year had to be Bad Bunny’s year as he ran it on his term, delivering high-quality music, staging an ambitious hometown residency in Puerto Rico that fans traveled across continents to attend, and largely skipping the U.S. on tour while still commanding global attention. With a Super Bowl halftime performance on deck, he’s stayed louder than most artists who even tried. A Grammys sweep feels like the natural outcome for this kind of dominance.