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The 2025 Grammy Awards nominations have been revealed.
Beyoncé leads the pack with 11 nominations for her country album “Cowboy Carter,” making her the most nominated artist in history. Close behind is Taylor Swift, who received six nominations for “The Tortured Poets Department.”
But many fans complained that their favourite artists were shut out of the awards — including some of the most popular entertainers of the past year. Here are five major snubs.
Ariana Grande fans were delighted when the vocal talent released a new album, “Eternal Sunshine,” in March, a surprise since she was thought to be fully focus on filming the upcoming musical film “Wicked.” The album dropped in March, the same month her split from husband Dalton Gomez was finalized, and was received as a raw, personal expression of ending a relationship.
And those fans were equally outraged that “Eternal Sunshine” was overlooked for the major Grammy categories like Best Album, as was its single “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” which recently surpassed one billion Spotify streams.
Still, Grande did receive nods for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Dance Pop Recording for “yes, and?” She was also nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for her remix of “the boy is mine” featuring Brandy and Monica.
Megan Thee Stallion received zero nominations, a surprise since the Texas-born rapper has three previous Grammys to her name. But her self-titled album “Megan” did receive lukewarm reviews: Pitchfork rated it a 6.6 and called it an “uneven album so preoccupied with giving every single type of fan exactly what they want that it might as well be crowdsourced.”
It came as a shock that an artist as celebrated as English-Albanian singer-songwriter Dua Lipa received no nominations when her catchy lead singles “Houdini” and “Training Session” dominated airwaves this year. As a whole, though, the album “Radical Optimism” wasn’t as memorable as her record-breaking “Future Nostalgia,” which won Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2021 Grammys.
South African singer Tyla won the Grammys’ inaugural Best African Music Performance award earlier this year, but her self-titled album was shut out of the nominations for 2025. This was a surprise as Tyla, who is deemed the “Queen of Popiano” for her mix of pop and the South African genre amapiano along with elements of R&B and Afrobeats, has emerged as a rising superstar with her well received eponymous album that included her catchy 2023 hit single “Water.”
A glaring snub in the Best Musical Theatre category was the omission of “Stereophonic.” Plays aren’t usually an obvious candidate for the Grammys, but David Adjmi’s production charting the highs and lows of a 1970s rock band on the cusp of superstardom was brilliantly written, produced and performed. It includes songs by former Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler that deserve to live outside the musical theatre canon. Equally deserving of a nomination was Stephen Sondheim’s posthumous musical “Here We Are.” It may not have been the composer’s strongest score but it’s one of the most impeccably produced Sondheim albums, featuring luscious and intricate orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick (Sondheim’s longtime collaborator). Instead, this category will likely be a dogfight between Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” (which would get my vote) and Alicia Keys’ jukebox musical “Hell’s Kitchen.” – Joshua Chong, Toronto Star
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