Yesterday we celebrated the 67th annual Grammy Awards, a night to commend all of the art over the past year, but with a bit more prestige than award shows like MTV’s Video Music Awards or the iHeartRadio Awards. I sat down to watch the whole ceremony (and oh boy was it long) and now I’m here to report back the biggest wins of the night and other notable moments that caught my eye.

(As with my recap of the VMAs last year, this recap will be fairly biased towards the artists that I care about and so if I don’t cover your favourite artist’s big win, I do apologise.)

So where to start? Well, before the show even began, Beyoncé had already broken two nomination records, becoming the artist with the highest number of nominations in a single ceremony (11), and the artist with the highest number of nominations of all time (99), taking the record from her husband Jay-Z. Taylor Swift also set the record for the woman with the most Album of the Year nominations (seven) being beaten out by Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Frank Sinatra (nine, eight, and eight respectively.)

Beyoncé performing songs from *Cowboy Carter* with her daughter Blue Ivy

And in a controversial move, the half-posthumous Beatles single “Now and Then” is the first song made with the help of AI to be nominated in any category.

(I feel like it’s important to note that it’s not AI as we’ve come to know and distrust it. The main cultural image of AI at the moment is generative AI, programs that take other people’s work, chop it up, and turn it into something “new”. What was used in this case was an AI program that helped to isolate vocals from pre-existing recordings made in 1977 and 1995, then combined with newly recorded vocals from 2023.)

And now on to the show!

The three-and-a-half hour ceremony was hosted by comedian Trevor Noah and had a lot of focus on the recent LA wildfires due to the city being home of the American pop music industry. Throughout the show, audiences at home as well as celebrities and corporate sponsors present at the event were urged to donate to help in their mission for wildfire relief. Scattered throughout the show were musical tributes to LA featuring artists like Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, and John Legend among others.

The non-tribute performances throughout the ceremony were similarly stacked with talent. Sabrina Carpenter performed a comedic, old-Hollywood inspired mashup of her hits “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please” with tap-dancing backup dancers and physical comedy galore, Doechii stunned with an army of other Doechiis performing “Catfish” and a big band infused rendition of “Denial is a River”, and Chappell Roan once again blew us all away with a performance of her gay anthem “Pink Pony Club” among a literal clown rodeo. This was a full circle moment once fans connected it to a quote from her recent Faces in Music documentary on Hulu:

“Boys in my high school would call gay people clowns, so I started doing white makeup because I was like: If you’re gonna call me a clown, then I’m going to be the best clown you’ve ever seen. It’s gonna be undeniable that I’m gay and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

On the awards front, it was a night of firsts.

Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, Chappell Roan, and Doechii all received their very first Grammy awards, Beyoncé became the first black artist to win Best Country Album, and Beyoncé also won Album of the Year for the first time in her career!!

That’s right, despite being both the most nominated artist and most awarded artist in Grammys history, with six nominations just for Album of the Year, she had never won the elusive award until today for Cowboy Carter. The album also won her Best Country Album and Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “II Most Wanted ft. Miley Cyrus”, bringing her total number of Grammy Awards to 35.

In her acceptance speech for Best Country Album she commented on her genre switch-up for Cowboy Carter, saying that, “I think sometimes genre is a cold word to keep us in our place as artists.”

The artist to emerge with the most awards on the night however was Kendrick Lamar! His Drake diss track “Not Like Us” brought in five awards including Record of the Year (for production) and Song of the Year (for lyricism). It was slightly amusing, though, when each time he walked up to the stage they played the most popular part of the track. You know? The bit where he calls Drake a “certified pedophile”? An interesting choice by CBS in my opinion, especially in the midst of Drake suing Universal Music Group for defamation over this particular lyric.

Surprising almost nobody, Chappell Roan was crowned Best New Artist beating out Sabrina and Doechii among many other worthy contenders. In her acceptance speech she once again read from her diary and shouting out brat. as “the best night of my year” before proceeding to call out the music industry. Citing the time when she was dropped from her original label as a time when she was “betrayed by the system”, she called for labels to treat artists as proper workers, with liveable wages and health insurance, ending her speech with, “We got you, but do you got us?”

Slightly surprising to me was the lack of awards in the cases of Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish. Nominated for six and seven awards respectively, both walked out empty handed. Better luck next time?

And that’s it for this year! Honestly this was a blast, and I can’t wait to see what the next year of music will bring us.

Below are the nominees and winners for the nine categories presented in the ceremony (yes, that’s nine awards in Three And A Half Hours). Bold indicates the winner, *asterisks* indicate my personal picks to win.

Album of the Year

*Cowboy Carter – Beyoncé*
New Blue Sun – André 3000
Short n' Sweet – Sabrina Carpenter
Brat – Charli XCX
Djesse Vol. 4 – Jacob Collier
Hit Me Hard and Soft – Billie Eilish
*The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess – Chappell Roan*
*The Tortured Poets Department – Taylor Swift*

Song of the Year

Not Like Us – Kendrick Lamar
A Bar Song (Tipsy) – Shaboozey
Birds of a Feather – Billie Eilish
*Fortnight – Taylor Swift*
*Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan*
Please Please Please – Sabrina Carpenter
Texas Hold 'Em – Beyoncé

Best New Album

*Chappell Roan*
Benson Boone
*Sabrina Carpenter*
Doechii
Khruangbin
Raye
Shaboozey
Teddy Swims

Record of the Year

Not Like Us – Kendrick Lamar
Now and Then – The Beatles
Texas Hold 'Em – Beyoncé
Espresso – Sabrina Carpenter
360 – Charli XCX
Birds of a Feather – Billie Eilish
*Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan*
*Fortnight – Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone*

Best Pop Vocal Album

*Short n' Sweet – Sabrina Carpenter*
Hit Me Hard and Soft – Billie Eilish
Eternal Sunshine – Ariana Grande
*The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess – Chappell Roan*
The Tortured Poets Department – Taylor Swift

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance

Die with a Smile – Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars
Us – Gracie Abrams featuring Taylor Swift
*Levii's Jeans – Beyoncé featuring Post Malone*
Guess – Charli XCX & Billie Eilish
The Boy Is Mine – Ariana Grande, Brandy & Monica

Best Country Album

*Cowboy Carter – Beyoncé*
F-1 Trillion – Post Malone
Deeper Well – Kacey Musgraves
Higher – Chris Stapleton
Whirlwind – Lainey Wilson

Best Rap Album

*Alligator Bites Never Heal – Doechii*
Might Delete Later – J. Cole
The Auditorium, Vol. 1 – Common & Pete Rock
The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) – Eminem
We Don't Trust You – Future & Metro Boomin

Best Latin Pop Album

Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran – Shakira
Funk Generation – Anitta
El Viaje – Luis Fonsi
García – Kany García
Orquídeas – Kali Uchis

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