It is once again time to make sense of the Grammy nominations, a practice that assumes the Grammy nominations make sense. They do, to an extent.

The Recording Academy operates according to a familiar, semi-predictable internal logic. If you’re making the year’s biggest hits and dominating the discourse, you’re probably in there. If you’re a veteran star with a veneer of prestige, you’re probably in too. If you’re a household name whose best music was released more than a decade ago, the Recording Academy is ready to funnel you into the genre categories in perpetuity. And if your music sounds like it was invented in a secret Berklee laboratory for the express purpose of infiltrating Harvey Mason’s group chats while maintaining no discernable imprint in any other corner of pop culture, consider yourself an honored guest for life.

This morning’s nominations played out more or less according to that rubric, with fewer surprises and aberrations than normal. Some takeaways:

This Could Be Beyoncé’s Year

In a sense, every year is Beyoncé’s year. She has won more Grammys than anybody, and as of today, she’s also received more nominations than anybody. But Album Of The Year has eluded her time after time, including in cycles when she released the best album by popular and critical consensus. She’s been beaten by juggernauts (Adele, who apologized to Beyoncé, which feels cringe in hindsight, and Harry Styles, who maybe should have apologized to the general public). She’s fallen to underdogs (Beck, who got instantly trolled by Kanye West). Her husband took the academy and several of her alleged peers to task from the Grammys stage.

For 2025, Queen Bey is nominated 11 times, four more than any other artist. She’s up for awards in multiple genres (pop, rap, country, and Americana) as well as Record, Song, and, yes, Album Of The Year. If the academy was trying to set the table for her long-awaited AOTY coronation, they’ve done a good job of it. However, if she finally wins in this particular category for Cowboy Carter — a strictly OK album that feels more like homework than anything she’s ever released, that seems to exist mostly to prove a point about genre barriers and racist Nashville gatekeeping — it’ll be pretty funny.

This Could Also Be Kendrick’s Year, Kind Of

Because Kendrick Lamar’s scorched-earth defeat of Drake took place outside the context of an album, he can’t claim the Album Of The Year trophy that he, too, has long been denied. But “Not Like Us” is right there in the Song and Record Of The Year races. He’s got some more nominations sprinkled into the rap categories for “Not Like Us” and “Like That,” the Future/Metro Boomin collab that sparked the beef in the first place.

Kendrick doesn’t need a Grammy triumph to validate his world-conquering year — his Pop Out concert and the “Not Like Us” video were already victory laps aplenty, and the Super Bowl Halftime Show will surely be the exclamation point on it all. Still, it would be cool if Kendrick took home some of the most prestigious Grammys for a song accusing Drake of being a pedophile — and given Drake’s status as a Recording Academy nemesis, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that spite will push this highly deserving track over the top. I maintain that it would be funnier if the Grammys went all-in on “Meet The Grahams” instead, but the thought of Kendrick leading the Grammy audience in an “O-V-hoe!” chant is extremely enticing.

Critic Brain And Grammy Brain Are Growing Uncomfortably Close

Every year we, the people of taste, have a lot of fun mocking the Grammys for making the same kinds of flubs again and again. So it was chastening in 2018 when Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, a critical sensation that topped Stereogum’s year-end albums list weeks earlier, took home Album Of The Year. Critical prestige and Grammy prestige are not exactly the same, but they overlap enough to make me nervous sometimes.

A few weeks ago Primavera Sound, the ultra-cool Barcelona music festival, announced Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter for its 2025 lineup. Rock-leaning institutions embracing pop is not a new phenomenon, and all three of those artists are doing genuinely great work right now, but the Primavera lineup struck me as a new frontier in poptimism. It does make sense, given that Chappell, Charli, and Sabrina have dominated both the cool-kid discourse and the broader pop music universe this year. They’ve been all over the charts, and they’ll all be healthily represented come year-end list time. And now they all have a chance at a huge Grammy night.

Both Roan and Carpenter are nominated in all four of the general field categories: Album Of The Year, Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, and Best New Artist. They have a chance at the kind of sweep enjoyed(?) by Billie Eilish, who is of course all over this year’s nominations as well. Should those of us who’ve made a pastime of mocking the Grammys have to eat our hats if one of our pop faves earns the academy’s adulation? What about if consensus hipster pick Brat wins Album Of The Year? Where do we even go from there? We’re all going to have to take a long look in the mirror, and not the kind of mirror that lends itself to the Brat experience.

The Snubs Were Mostly Unsurprising

Most of the names that made it into the general field categories either align with the zeitgeist or are the kinds of brand-name stars who will always be nominated: Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Charli XCX, the Beatles (lol). The ones who were left out either have not traditionally gotten a lot of Grammy love (Ariana Grande), or are struggling for a hit right now and edging toward famous-for-being-famous territory (Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa). These artists might be perplexed about why Coldplay-adjacent Grammy-core jazzbo Jacob Collier got into AOTY pool and not them, but it squares with my concept of Grammy logic. So does André 3000’s nod for his noble-but-OK-let’s-be-serious flute album.

You could make the case that, like Megan and Dua, Doja Cat is on a trajectory away from mainstream hit-maker status. But given her status as a recent Grammy-winner, it was surprising to see her left in the cold. Considering the Grammy love for peers like the Black Keys and Black Pumas, a resurgent Hozier’s absence from the list is dumbfounding. South African pop star Tyla, who won Best African Music Performance for “Water” last year, seemed like a contender for Best New Artist, or at least some genre category love, now that her debut album has arrived. (Yes, you can be nominated for Best New Artist after winning a Grammy.) Arguably the most surprising is Jack Antonoff, who just pulled off a threepeat as Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical, left off the list of nominees in that category despite continuing to work closely with Grammy darlings like Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. For what it’s worth, he’s nominated twice for AOTY and once for ROTY for his work with those artists.

The Rock Categories Remain Butt

If you’re nominated in a rock category, can you even feel good about yourself? Congrats to Fontaines D.C., whose Romance might actually be the best rock album of the year, but it’s hard to pay any mind to a field where the competition includes legends way past their prime — Green Day, Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones, the motherfucking Black Crowes — as well as IDLES, kings of cringe who I begrudgingly respect. (They’re fine, but if you think they’re the best rock band going right now, you probably own Notorious R.B.G. merchandise.)

Like, Jack White would be on this list even if No Name wasn’t an exhilarating return to form. It’s just the most dead-brained, low-effort bullshit imaginable, and it makes me madder the more I think about it. Best Rock Performance, with an obligatory Beatles nod plus Green Day, the Black Keys, IDLES, Pearl Jam, and St. Vincent, is only slightly less embarrassing. Rock music may be dead or dying, but the landscape ain’t this bleak.

Best New Artist Remains Amusing

The Grammys consistently provide us with joke fodder by nominating Best New Artist candidates who’ve been around forever. And even if they didn’t go so far as to nominate Sophie Ellis-Bextor, the inclusion of Khruangbin and Sabrina Carpenter, nine years after each of their first albums, is exactly that kind of eyeroll-inducing move. Carpenter, at least, has enjoyed a significant cross-generational breakthrough this year. What is the rationale for including Khruangbin, who’ve remained steadily on course making chill psych-funk beats to study to for the past decade?

Your Indie Rock Faves Might Win In Other Categories

First-time nominee Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood, our pick for the best album of 2024’s first half, is up for Best Americana Album, which probably makes sense, even if I’d have instinctively slotted it into Best Alternative Music Album. Meanwhile Madi Diaz and Adrianne Lenker (whose main band Big Thief actually did get a Best Alternative nod last year) will face off for Best Folk Album. All three of them are better than the albums that did get nominated in the Alternative category, even if I liked the Kim Gordon and Nick Cave releases a lot. Something about the folk and Americana categories feels more respectable than alternative anyway — too close to the stink emanating off the rock section, I guess.