The 2025 Grammys is must miss TV this winter

Earlier this month, the 2025 Grammys Awards nominations were announced, and as the Arts & Entertainment editor, I thought it was only right if I gave my two cents on the list of nominees. Now, keep in mind that the Grammys has 94 categories so I won’t be able to cover every nominee, but let’s discuss the major stuff.

To get right to the point, Beyonce’s name comes up way too much. I can’t seem to escape the Instagram Reels and TikToks conspiring that Beyonce is some evil person that everyone in the industry fears. But after looking through the long list of nominations she received, I’m starting to legitimately wonder if she’s pulling some strings.

Her below average track, “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM,” from an even more underwhelming “COWBOY CARTER” finagled its way into “Record of the Year” and “Song of the Year,” while “COWBOY CARTER” is up for “Album of the Year.” I’ll give props to Beyonce for experimenting with a new genre, but her attempt at country music left us with an overly long album and little cohesiveness. I’m convinced that her past stardom and the sheer number of streams the project received led to the multiple award nominations.

I’ve always been a huge supporter of Andre 3000 and all the work he’s done as an independent artist as well as a member of the Atlanta duo Outkast, so I was all ears when he released “New Blue Sun.” The hour-and-a-half album that spans eight songs is entirely instrumental, making it the quintessential studying playlist. Album of the Year quality music, though? Not quite. I don’t think you can bang some maracas around for an hour and blow on a flute to be in the running for the biggest award of the night, but maybe that’s just me.

The rap nominations for this year’s Grammys had to have been some of the all-time worst. Hip hop in general is in a Great Depression-like era, but there surely had to have been more options than J. Cole’s throwaway album, “Might Delete Later,” or Doechii’s “Alligator Bites Never Heal.” J. Cole literally did delete songs off this album, and it’s hard to believe that someone of his status would feel comfortable potentially winning a “Rap Album of the Year” award for a project that sounds like he sloppily threw it together in one weekend.

To put Doechii’s album in the genre of rap is a stretch since she sings 90% of the time. To make matters worse, only three of the 19 songs on her project run for longer than three minutes. How can it be nominated for “Rap Album of the Year” when the project is compiled of snippets of Doechii wailing rather than complete rap songs?

21 Savage’s “American Dream” and Vince Staples’ “Dark Times” were two albums I’d nominate in a heartbeat, and two projects that would probably win very easily in the minds of actual rap fans. Future and Metro Boomin’s “We Don’t Trust You” is likely going to win since it hovers around the Drake and Kendrick Lamar drama, while also consisting of songs that swirled around social media for the entirety of the summer.

I’ll finish my complaints of this year’s Grammys with the country section of the awards show. To no one’s surprise, Beyonce inserted herself into the mix even though she managed to secure a spot in just about every pop category as well. I’d argue that it should have been made clear whether her “COWBOY CARTER” was a country or pop album, because receiving nominations in both genres seems twisted.

The nominations that the Grammys pulls out of the dumpster for the country genre further prove why you should pay more attention to something like the Country Music Awards (CMAs). You have to be an industry plant to even land on the Grammys’ list. 

When you have perfectly crafted albums from Nashville natives Chris Stapleton and ERNEST, there’s just no reason why Beyonce and Shaboozey should be headlining the category for the TikTok “country” tunes they made. There are artists rooted in country who find their identity in the genre. I don’t think it’s wise to reward fake country artists for making  mediocre songs that girls, who just bought their first pair of cowboy boots, can dance to.

Since the country category is plagued with pop artists, I’d cast my vote for Post Malone. His project “F-1 Trillion” sees him team up with all of country music’s greatest while giving listeners a taste of his Texan rasp for the first time.

The Grammys is a popularity contest, and understandably so, but it can get pretty tiring seeing the same five artists run the entire night. You start to wonder if what Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Beyonce and Ariana Grande produce is even that good, or if they are being carried by social media and a population of people too lazy to listen to anything that isn’t in the “Today’s Top Hits” playlist on Spotify. 

The 2025 Grammys is another score for the industry plants. All that’s left to do is cross our fingers and hope shows like the CMAs and BET awards get the nominations right. Congratulations to Beyonce for scoring nominations in just about every genre outside of jazz – although I think we could have found more suitable nominees than her in every category. But hey, Jay Z must have put in a good word for her.