Based on purely anecdotal evidence, the common post-show consensus is that the 2025 Grammys were the best in many years on nearly every level: The freshness of the performances, the fittingness of the winners, and to an unprecedented degree, the righting of some longstanding wrongs, notably the Recording Academy’s checkered history with Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar and the Weeknd.
While nearly every presenter on the show referenced the “13,000 voters” who decided the winners — presumably to highlight the enormous number of opinions that are taken into account, and also as a way of publicly dispelling notions of smoke-filled rooms and self-interested machinations — there’s little question that we’re seeing a Recording Academy that has changed dramatically from the haughty, out-of-touch one of twenty-five years ago.
All awards shows of this nature are subjective, so it’s hard to use the word right in this context, but the fact that Beyonce had never won album of the year was such a commonly held sentiment that even Adele called it out after her “25” bested Beyonce’s “Lemonade” in 2017. And even though Beyonce became the top Grammy winner of all time in 2023 — and now has 35 wins amid 99 nominations, not including her two wins with Destiny’s Child — she still had won a top category just once: best song for “Single Ladies” in 2009.
So it’s both fitting and ironic that “Cowboy Carter” — certainly the strangest, most experimental and least commercial album she’s ever released — finally broke the drought. It’s an hour-plus-long, country-leaning album with just a couple of bangers and lots of out-there moments, but the victory also suggests that the Academy’s updated membership — the end result of a long campaign by CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and the organization’s board to diversify and youth-ify its membership in hopes of increasing relevance and more accurately reflecting the musical and cultural zeitgeist — is truly taking hold. Sure, guilt was a factor, but to suggest it was the primary factor is ludicrous: Beyonce is not only a formative artist for younger members, they’re also likely rewarding her experimentation.
On a similar note, Kendrick Lamar’s wins for “Not Like Us” in the best song and best record category repaired a longstanding snub not only of himself but hip-hop recordings in the main categories. A rap artist only has won best album twice, and both of those albums, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” and Outkast’s “Speakerboxxx/ The Love Below,” are really only partially hip-hop albums. Rap songs have only won the top song categories on rare occasions, with the most recent being Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” — yes, a rap song, but one that was also a statement of protest from a familiar face (hey, Donald Glover was in “Star Wars”) released deep into the first Trump Administration, unlocking two sentiments in voters that may have resounded beyond the song itself. But not only is “Not Like Us” a hard hip-hop song, it’s a blistering diss track that was vicious enough to inspire its target to sue his own record label for defamation. Most of all, it was also arguably the most culturally dominant song of 2024.
Finally, the Weeknd is a more-recent but equally nefarious situation: In the most egregious awards-show snub in memory, the music world was stunned in 2020 when the Weeknd, whose smash single “Blinding Lights” shattered streaming records all over the globe (and remains the most-streamed song in Spotify history), was nominated for zero awards that year. While the reason for it was never fully explained — Mason did his best to point to the voters’ “honoring excellence” — the most commonly speculated one revolved around the fact that the Weeknd was playing the Super Bowl Halftime show just a week after the Grammys, breaking a traditional protocol. While Mason and the board moved swiftly and overhauled the organization’s awards department and process within weeks, the Weeknd said he was boycotting the Grammys and has not submitted his recordings for awards ever since, although he was nominated for songs by other artists on which he was a featured performer. (Recordings must be officially submitted by the artist or label in order to be eligible, and failure to do so has become a form of protest by artists against the Academy.)
However, it seems likely that the Los Angeles wildfires, which led the Weeknd to delay the release of his latest album “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” and the 2025 Grammys’ enormous efforts to raise relief funds played into his decision to make a surprise performance on the show that effectively showed he was willing to bury the hatchet.
In introducing the performance, Mason spoke of the criticism the Academy had received at the time, but “criticism is okay,” he said.
“I heard [the Weeknd] and I felt his conviction,” he continued. “What we all want is an organization dedicated to the well-being of all music makers, and one that reflects the entire music community, for now, and for future generations. So over the past few years, we’ve listened. We’ve acted. And, we’ve changed. We’ve launched initiatives like the Black Music Collective, Women in the Mix, Academy Proud, and others. We have completely re-made our membership, adding more than 3,000 women voting members. The Grammy electorate is now younger, nearly 40% people of color, and 66% of our members are new since we started our transformation.”
Voters for awards like this, no matter their age or background, will always bring bias, consciously or not, and it’s unfortunate that Beyonce’s win for country album of the year has already set off a wave of controversy — it’s probably just a matter of time before a certain president blames it for a natural disaster — that exposes a different snub, not only for the Grammys but for most country awards shows: the refusal to acknowledge the most popular and successful country artist in the world, Morgan Wallen.
But that’s a battle for another day. For the past five years, Mason and the Academy have been making major, decisive upgrades to an organization that was previously painfully out of touch and doggedly resistant to change, and although there’s still a long way to go, those upgrades seem to be bearing positive results. Nothing and no one is flawless, even Queen Bey herself, but this year, the Grammys done good.
