Country Universe favorites Brandy Clark, Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves, Allison Russell, Chris Stapleton, and Taylor Swift did very well at this year’s Grammy Awards.
Here’s a list of this year’s winners in the general, country, and country-adjacent categories.
GENERAL FIELD
Record of the Year
Jon Batiste, “Worship”
Boygenius, “Not Strong Enough”
Miley Cyrus, “Flowers”
Billie Eilish, “What Was I Made For?”
Victoria Monet, “On My Mama”
Olivia Rodrigo, “Vampire”
Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”
SZA, “Kill Bill”
Album of the Year
Jon Batiste, World Music Radio
Boygenius, The Record
Miley Cyrus, Endless Summer Vacation
Lana Del Rey, Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Janelle Monae, The Age of Pleasure
Olivia Rodrigo, GUTS
Taylor Swift, Midnights
SZA, SOS
Song of the Year
“A&W” – Jack Antonoff, Lana Del Rey, and Sam Dew
“Anti-Hero” – Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift
“Butterfly” – Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson
“Dance the Night” – Caroline Ailin, Dua Lipa, Mark Ronson, and Andrew Wyatt
“Flowers” – Miley Cyrus, Gregory Aldae Hein, and Michael Pollack
“Kill Bill” – Rob Bisel, Carter Lang, and Solana Rowe
“Vampire” – Daniel Nigro and Olivia Rodrigo
“What Was I Made For?” – Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell
“It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me,” is the song lyric that’s had the broadest cultural traction in a generation, and that’s a testament to Swift’s songwriting skill. Nevermind that the verses of “Anti-Hero” are some of her most over-written. Eilish seems like a strong possibility here, too, given her song’s juggernaut run through the film awards season, but the way this ballot shook out tells me we’re in for a repeat of last year’s Bonnie Raitt upset.
Will Win: “Butterfly” – Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson
Should Win: “Anti-Hero” – Jack Antonoff and Taylor Swift
Best New Artist
Gracie Abrams
Fred Again
Ice Spice
Jelly Roll
Coco Jones
Noah Kahan
Victoria Monet
The War and Treaty
Producer of the Year, Non-Classical
Jack Antonoff
Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II
Hit-Boy
Metro Boomin
Daniel Nigro
Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical
Edgar Barrera
Jessie Jo Dillon
Shane McAnally
Theron Thomas
Justin Trainer
COUNTRY
Best Country Solo Performance
Tyler Childers, “In Your Love”
Brandy Clark, “Buried”
Luke Combs, “Fast Car”
Dolly Parton, “The Last Thing On My Mind”
Chris Stapleton, “White Horse”
Best Country Duo/Group Performance
Dierks Bentley featuring Billy Strings, “High Note”
Brothers Osborne, “Nobody’s Nobody”
Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything”
Vince Gill and Paul Franklin, “Kissing Your Picture (is So Cold)”
Jelly Roll with Lainey Wilson, “Save Me”
Carly Pearce featuring Chris Stapleton, “We Don’t Fight Anymore”
Best Country Song
“Buried” – Brandy Clark and Jessie Jo Dillon
“I Remember Everything” – Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves
“In Your Love” – Tyler Childers and Geno Seale
“Last Night” – John Byron, Ashley Gorley, Jacob Kasher Hindlin, and Ryan Vojtesak
“White Horse” – Chris Stapleton and Dan Wilson
Best Country Album
Kelsea Ballerini, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat
Brothers Osborne, Brothers Osborne
Zach Bryan, Zach Bryan
Tyler Childers, Rustin’ in the Rain
Lainey Wilson, Bell Bottom Country
AMERICAN ROOTS MUSIC
Best American Roots Performance
Jon Batiste, “Butterfly”
The Blind Boys of Alabama, “Heaven Help Us All”
Madison Cunningham, “Inventing the Wheel”
Rhiannon Giddens, “You Louisiana Man”
Allison Russell, “Eve Was Black”
Best Americana Performance
The Blind Boys of Alabama, “Friendship”
Tyler Childers, “Help Me Make it Through the Night”
Brandy Clark featuring Brandi Carlile, “Dear Insecurity”
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, “King of Oklahoma”
Allison Russell, “The Returner”
Best American Roots Song
“Blank Page” – Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter
“California Sober” – Aaron Allen, William Apostol, and Jon Weisberger
“Cast Iron Skillet” – Jason Isbell
“”Dear Insecurity” – Brandy Clark and Michael Pollack
The Returner” – Drew Lindsay, JT Nero, and Allison Russell
Best Americana Album
Brandy Clark, Brandy Clark
Rodney Crowell, The Chicago Sessions
Rhiannon Giddens, You’re the One
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Weathervanes
Allison Russell, The Returner
Best Bluegrass Album
Sam Bush, Radio John: The Songs of John Hartford
Michael Cleveland, Lovin’ of the Game
Mighty Poplar, Mighty Poplar
Willie Nelson, Bluegrass
Billy Strings, Me/and/Dad
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, City of Gold
Best Folk Album
Dom Flemons, Traveling Wildfire
The Milk Cartons, I Only See the Moon
Joni Mitchell, Joni Mitchell at Newport
Nickel Creek, Celebrants
Old Crow Medicine Show, Jubilee
Paul Simon, Seven Psalms
Rufus Wainwright, Folkocracy
I’m really tired of how we’re told Beyonce can’t win Album of the Year even once because she has too many Grammys, yet Taylor can win Album a fourth time. Sounds about white. In the past 25 years not a single Black woman has won Album of the Year despite huge commercial and critical successes like SOS, The Emancipation of Mimi, Lemonade, Under Construction, etc.
I don’t think that the same people arguing Beyonce shouldn’t win AOTY because she has too many Grammys are the same people encouraging/cheering on a fourth AOTY for Swift.
I agree that Beyonce should have two or even three AOTY already. But the only AOTY winner of Swift’s that I think was undeserved was Fearless, and even that is with the power of hindsight. NARAS loves an ingenue and tends to reward women early in their career.
As far as Emancipation of Mimi goes, I think it should’ve lost to Kanye West’s Graduation instead of U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. NARAS tended to nominate Carey’s biggest albums, not her best. An AOTY case could be made pretty strongly for Butterfly, IMO.
Then again, Madonna’s made as many brilliant records as all of these ladies – probably more – and she’s only been nominated for AOTY once. It’s a testament to how times have changed that at least major female pop and R&B artists get nominated for AOTY regularly, which only started happening as the norm over the last decade and a half. Progress is slow.
The thing is that you can always make a case for why an album shouldn’t have won (they’ve won a lot, they’ve made better albums, whatever). The winners are the people where those excused are looked past, and it’s telling if Black women are consistently the ones where there is some excuse against a win. A narrative this year could easily have been that Swift has won enough and that SZA had a huge year with a critically acclaimed album that produced a lot of hits. That isn’t the narrative we got. The narrative for 2005 could have been that U2 released a mid-tier album and had won a lot before while Mariah Carey released the biggest selling album of the year in perhaps the biggest comeback of all-time in music. That isn’t the narrative we got (hell she didn’t even win ROTY or SOTY that year, which perhaps would have made more sense anyway). The narrative could have been that Beyonce changed the music industry (with self-titled) or released a piece of art that used the history of Black music to highlight the troubles in her marriage (with Lemonade, though I’ll point out Mariah had done the exact same thing with Me. I Am Mariah a year or two prior). That isn’t the narrative we got.
I agree about SZA and Beyoncé.
I’m surprised by the idea that Mimi was the biggest musical comeback of all time. It was a return to commercial success on par with Green Day from around the same time: an album that significantly outsold its recent predecessors but fell short of the artist’s previous high water mark (Dookie vs. MC/Music Box/Daydream) by a healthy margin. I think something like Santana’s Supernatural would be the biggest musical comeback of all time.
I never saw Carey as a serious AOTY contender for Mimi. Her nomination was her award there. Daydream was her best shot, but had the unfortunate timing to be in the same year as Jagged Little Pill, much like Madonna (Ray of Light) and Shania (Come On Over) had the unfortunate timing to be in the same year as The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Carey would’ve won in a walk one year later.
But definitely a nice bounce back from her that earned her some overdue Grammy love.
KJC – Mariah was at about the lowest point any major artist could be in the early 2000s. She was a literal national joke and her singles from Glitter and Charmbracelet tanked. To then come back and release the biggest selling album of the year and have multiple big hits was a HUGE comeback. Neither Green Day or Santana were coming off being a national joke. Plus Emancipation of Mimi sold more than American Idiot (and I did write ”
“perhaps the biggest” leaving room for others; Tina Turner would be in the conversation as well). You also can’t really compare sales in the mid-2000s to sales in the 1990s as sales in general were lower in the mid-2000s. And actually TEOM has Soundscan sales about the same amount as Music Box and Daydream, it’s just that music clubs were gone by then so it doesn’t have those extra sales.
Yeah, Tina Turner, Cher, and few others. Mimi was a Confessions of a Dance Floor level comeback, IMO. Got her back to big sales and back on the radio after a low point. It was especially huge in America.
Green Day sold an estimated 16 million units of American Idiot and it launched them back to headlining status, got them into the HOF in their first year of eligibility, and was the basis for a Broadway musical. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get that it didn’t win album of the year, but I think it wasn’t out long enough for its impact to be fully apparent. I think they gave them ROTY the next year to make up for it.
Erik – Oh wow, I am thankful KJC added the point he did about reverse racism because yeah. Literally no one has said Beyonce should win because she’s black. The point is that the same reasons given for certain people winning AOTY (they had a huge year commercially, they caused change in the industry, they’re a legend) are ignored when it comes to black women, and the excuses used to deny black women (they’ve won enough, we shouldn’t be pressured to vote for them, they had help from other producers and writers) aren’t used to deny white people or even black men a win for AOTY. That is what makes it systemic racism.
KJC – Yeah it is odd in a way that Swift has never won Pop Solo, for instance. I guess her appeal is actually better outside of the Pop voters. Billie Eilish is very similar. In terms of Krauss and Beyonce, they are aided by their genres having more categories since Pop basically just has Album, Solo/Female, and Group. I still don’t understand why there isn’t a Pop Song category when there is a genre Song category for everything else.
Yeah when you look at the flop sales and even more at the truly diminished image Mariah had in 2001 and then compare it to the huge sales, multiple hits, and great image Mariah had in 2005 the difference is remarkable. Mariah then led the field with 8 Grammy nominations. Not only did the Grammys not reward her with even one of the big 3 awards, they didn’t air a single one of her wins that night during the telecast (all 3 of her wins that night were pre-telecast). Surely she deserved an on-stage moment of recognition.
KJC – Believe and Confessions each produced 1 hit in the U.S. and are 4x and 1x platinum in the U.S., respectively (and Believe was released when album sales were at their peak). How is The Emancipation of Mimi on that same level when it’s 7x platinum and produced 2 #1 hits, a #2 hit, a top 20 hit with “It’s Like That,” and then a #1 R&B hit with “Fly Like a Bird” as well? Your bias is showing here or something.
American Idiot is 6x platinum in the U.S. Since this is a Grammys discussion, my focus has been on the U.S. I’m also not sure what Green Day was coming back from to call it a comeback.
Just a bias toward stats and facts, which I find fascinating.
Confessions and Believe were bigger internationally than domestically, and Mimi was especially huge domestically. I think the Grammys reflected that well, giving Carey quite a few more trophies for Mimi than Madonna and Cher got for Confessions and Believe, respectively.
But I do consider the ultimate benchmark for any global artist to be international sales. It’s interesting to me that all three albums – Mimi, Confessions, Believe – are estimated at 10 million sales worldwide. Not quite the high water mark for Madonna and Mariah that it was for Cher, but impressive nonetheless!
Green Day had been reduced to opening for Blink 182 and their last album had barely cleared gold. American Idiot had them headlining arenas and stadiums around the world on a scale that their career had never seen before. I’m not even sure they get into the Rock Hall of Fame at all, let alone first year eligible, if not for that album.
At the risk of sounding like I am defending Taylor Swift (even though I don’t think much of her voice or her songwriting), I think it is important to remember that a lot of people who “deserved” an Album of the Year Grammy either have never gotten so much as a nomination, or have but then been passed over. Beyonce isn’t the first to have that happen to her, and she likely won’t be the last.
Elvis, the man who totally upended American popular music in the 1950’s, never got an Album of the Year nomination, not even for what is arguably his greatest studio album, 1969’s From Elvis In Memphis. He won three Grammys, it is true; but all of those were for his work in the Gospel field (though that was still a big deal).
Linda Ronstadt has been nominated twenty-seven times for Grammys; but only two of those were in the Album of the Year category: 1975’s Heart Like A Wheel and 1987’s Trio. Both times, she lost, although she more than made up for it in both years by winning for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1975 (“I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You”) and Best Country Vocal Duo/Group Performance in 1987 for <i.Trio/i>. And ironically, her most recent win in 2021, Best Music Film (for The Sound Of My Voice), came at Beyonce’s expense.
And finally, Sir Georg Solti, whom Beyonce surpassed in terms of all-time Grammy wins, won all of his in the Classical field, many of them for recordings he made during his 22-year tenure from 1969 to 1991 as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
When you get right down to it, though, just how many awards, and in what categories, does anyone, let alone Beyonce or Taylor Swift, need to be validated? It’s almost as if, instead of doing this out of love for the work, they’re doing it for the prizes. And as Linda herself said in 2019: “If you’re working for prizes, you’re in big trouble.”
Well Erik, based on that Netflix documentary, we know Taylor is at least in part doing it for the Grammys. Regardless, while I can’t speak for others, I don’t think this conversation is about her specifically; it’s about systemic racism and she’s just an example. If excuses are consistently made for why Black women don’t deserve to win AOTY but those same excuses don’t also apply to white men or women, that’s systemic racism. I guess one can say “But it’s just awards,” but we all know art can influence culture. There are plenty of kids who see people performing and winning awards and it makes them think they can do it. Imagine the impact if more Black women were allowed to win the big awards. And of course people shouldn’t chase awards, but that doesn’t mean awards are irrelevant or else this site wouldn’t cover them and we wouldn’t be here discussing them.
In all fairness, I can’t say that the Grammy awards are always based on artistic merit, since, just like the CMA’s and the ACM’s when we talk about country music specifically, a lot of lobbying and schmoozing goes on behind the scenes. But when it comes to whether someone is denied an award specifically because of alleged industry racism, systemic or otherwise, exact;y how does one prove it?
I’m not saying this kind of racism doesn’t exist; in all good honesty, it probably still does even unto this day. But don’t just give someone like Beyonce the top Grammy because of their racial/ethic background, becayse, in my opinion, that’s not any better than to deny them that for those very same reasons.
Literally nobody has argued that Beyoncé should get a Grammy because she’s black. That’s just a “reverse racism” accusation in disguise, which implies that if she did win AOTY, it wouldn’t be on merit, but because of her race.
The very accurate observation is that for the last two decades, Black women haven’t won Album of the Year despite dominating in their genre categories, while plenty of white artists and some Black men have.
Alison Krauss was the previous woman with the most Grammy Awards. She has two AOTY wins, as well as a ROTY win.
Taylor Swift has significantly overperformed in AOTY, winning it four times while having only ten below the line wins.
It’s clear that the overall Grammy voter base, all of whom can vote in the general fields, are as slow to recognize women from R&B / Hip-Hop as they once were to recognize rock artists. I fully expect Samara Joy to be the first Black woman to win AOTY since Lauryn Hill did 25 years ago, if anyone is going to do it, because her work is so traditional. But the artists pushing music forward, like SZA, will be restricted to genre wins, where more knowledgeable voters are making the call.
I’m a huge fan of Ronstadt, but we’re talking here about female artists that have been successful on an entirely different scale than Ronstadt. You simply can’t compare female artists pre-Madonna to Madonna-present, when the dominant voices in popular music switched from male to female. That was a seismic shift on par with Elvis and the Beatles.
And that Ronstadt quote is a bit patronizing anyway. She obviously cared about winning Grammys because she continued to submit her work for consideration, even in categories as obscure as Best Children’s Album. There is nothing so special about Ronstadt vs. other artists that makes her “working for prizes” any more or less than her peers.
With all due respect, Linda’s record company (which was Elektra/Asylum from 1972 to 2000) submitted her work for consideration, though she certainly didn’t oppose them doing it. If you want the full context of what she meant, view this interview she gave on CBS Sunday Morning in February 2019:
“I mean, it’s nice to be acknowledged, it’s nice for your work to be acknowledged; but it’s not what you do it for. You do it for the work. If you’re doing it for prizes, you’re in big trouble.” That’s how Linda herself sees this issue.
Linda Ronstadt has also explicitly condemned racism and how it limited opportunities for her, which seems a lot more relevant to this conversation than your casual dismissal of the possibility that systemic racism and sexism are preventing artists of color from being fully recognized for their work.
Much of the Hall of Fame conversation surrounding Ronstadt – and much of her Grammy-winning documentary, for that matter – was about how her gender kept Ronstadt from being inducted in the Hall for far too many years.
Ronstadt herself has talked about how passing as white insulated her from most of the racism that could’ve otherwise made her career and life more difficult: ““If you are White, it’s different. I had very light skin and a German surname, so it was easy for people to think I wasn’t Mexican.”
Ronstadt herself is aware that the bar for her being accepted would’ve been higher if she was visibly Mexican. I’m pretty sure if she were to add to the conversation surrounding Black women being overlooked for a quarter century in the AOTY category, she would draw on her own experiences of racism and sexism, not blithely dismiss these concerns as being focused on winning prizes instead of making art.
KJC – This discussion was an outgrowth of the Grammys, which are US-based, and how a Black woman hasn’t won AOTY in the past 25 years. Within that context, Mariah’s comeback being huge in the US should certainly be the focus point. Kacey Musgraves didn’t win AOTY because of her international market, for instance.
Regardless of the fact that I don’t think Green Day was coming back from the low Mariah was because they weren’t a joke, they actually further the point anyway. Keep in mind when American Idiot was up for AOTY, it was before the album had really taken off. It’s telling that it was the next year that “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (the big hit off the album) was up for ROTY – and won. So to that end, Green Day was awarded for their increased success. They actually beat Mariah for that award, despite her having the biggest song of the decade (according to Billboard). Additionally since U2 won Album and Song, it means all 3 of the big category winners that year were white male rock bands despite The Emancipation of Mimi and Graduation being huge successes that year.
Mimi deserved AOTY over Atomic Bomb, but I think that the best and most important album of that year’s nominees was Kanye’s Late Registration. I’d definitely give the nod to “Broken Dreams” over “We Belong Together” for ROTY, but both were worthy of the win.
Not because of chart success, because that’s what Billboard awards are for. But because they’re both great, career-defining records. The biggest record of the eighties, according to Billboard, was “Physical,” and it didn’t even get a ROTY nomination!
What I don’t understand is why Butterfly didn’t show up in AOTY or R&B Album. Was she hurt by label politics? Because that one is her masterpiece, IMO.
KJC – In terms of Butterfly, label politics likely didn’t help, and I’m sure the image change didn’t help either. It’s also clear that Mariah has never been a Grammys favorite anyway. After winning 2 Grammys for her debut album, she didn’t win another Grammy for 15 years despite having a #1 every year of the 1990s (and helping write and produce nearly all of them). Not that chart success should dictate everything, but in that span similar artists like Celine, Whitney, Toni, Christina, etc were winning Grammys for work that wasn’t any better or more successful than Mariah. And as has been said, Mariah then has this huge comeback in 2005 and still can’t win a top award and her 3 genre wins happened before the televised ceremony starts so she didn’t even get that big TV moment of celebration (plus she’s terrific at speeches).
With that being said, at least Beyonce is able to win genre awards. It’s AOTY where there is a block. It’s also kind of weird that the only 3 times Black women have ever won AOTY all occurred in the 1990s. ROTY has been similar lately with Lizzo being the only Black woman to win ROTY in the past 30 years!! SOTY has been slightly better with Alicia Keys, Beyonce, and HER winning in the past 25 years.
(For whatever it’s worth I think Daydream is my favorite Mariah album just because nearly every song could have been a single, but I’d agree Butterfly is probably her best and in some ways most influential and timeless.)
“We Belong Together” was the longest running #1 of that decade and the Billboard Song of the Decade. The album was the #1 selling album of 2005 in the U.S. That’s a huge comeback. I think it’s really odd the way the Grammys have snubbed her over the years considering she writes and produces (which they usually love) and has been the most influential artist of the past 30 or so years.
To some of the other posts, I think Mimi might be my favorite Mariah album. I like the mix of the old school tracks and catchy bops. My other favorite album of hers is Emotions because it also has that classic old-school R&B feel. That one feels underrated.
Erik – I don’t know that anyone except Swift does it for awards, and then that’s only maybe 40% of why she does it. The point is that these awards do matter in a general sense. Nearly 20 million people in the U.S. watched the Grammys live this year. The media (and social media) obviously covered it as well. That’s a huge platform for artists to reach people who may not have ever heard their music. It’s a reality that consumers will then check out the work that wins and gets coverage. If certain people and genres are being excluded from that, it just creates a cycle of those artists and genres not getting the attention they may deserve.
Swift doesn’t do it for awards, but she very much appreciates them, just like most artists do.
The Grammys are doing a better job of splitting the top categories and avoiding sweeps in recent years. The blind spot is very specifically black women in AOTY. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Samara Joy who breaks the logjam there.
KJC – In that Netflix documentary we literally see Swift checking on her Grammy noms and then responding to the lack of an AOTY nom by noting she’ll have to do better. Clearly the Grammys are a goal and something she thinks about when making her albums. I don’t see how there’s any denying it, and I respect her for being honest about it. I can only assume that’s why she had blinders on when she won this year and completely ignored the effort it took Celine Dion to be on stage.
I’d also say the Grammys have a specific blind spot to Black women in ROTY as well. Lizzo did win last year, but again she is the only Black woman in the past 30 years who has won ROTY. That’s pretty glaring, especially when you consider the great and popular singles artists like Missy Elliott, Beyonce, Mariah, Alicia, Rihanna, Cardi B, and more have released in the past 30 years.
Is the cover image of this article enhanced AI? I haven’t seen a version of the Midnights cover zoomed out like that and it looks like one of those TikTok edits.
I don’t think so.
This line from a new review of Emancipation of Mimi reminded me of the discussion here:
“would reinvigorate a career that, at that time, many in the music industry and media had left for dead.” So yeah, showing how low Mariah was at the time.
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mariah-carey-the-emancipation-of-mimi/?mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=p4k&utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter