By Ben Sisario
Beyoncé and Taylor Swift will face off in all top categories at the 67th annual Grammy Awards, leading a pack of nominees that also features buzzy young female stars who have dominated the pop charts over the past year.
With 11 nods, Beyoncé has more citations than any other artist this year, for “Cowboy Carter,” her gumbo of country, R&B and acoustic pop that spurred conversations about the Black roots of many American genres, including country.
The other top nominees, with seven apiece, are Billie Eilish, a onetime teenage disrupter who is now a Grammy and Oscar darling; Kendrick Lamar, the rapper laureate, whose nominations stem from a no-holds-barred battle of words with Drake; Post Malone, a pop shape-shifter gone country (and who appeared on both Beyoncé’s and Swift’s latest albums); and Charli XCX, the British singer-songwriter and meme master whose digital-nostalgic iconography was borrowed by the Kamala Harris campaign.
Swift has six nominations, as do Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — two of this year’s fresh pop sensations, each receiving their first Grammy nods.
The awards ceremony is set for Feb. 2 in Los Angeles.
The biggest contest this year, at least in terms of celebrity wattage, is Beyoncé vs. Swift. Both are juggernauts in the culture and at the Grammys. With 32 career trophies, Beyoncé, 43, has already won more awards than any other artist and is now also the most-nominated person, with 99. Yet she has never taken album of the year, despite four previous nods.
The competition between Beyoncé and Swift may well invoke the Grammys’ complex history with race, which has come up in recent years, as Beyoncé has lost the top prize to Adele and Harry Styles.
At the most recent ceremony, Jay-Z, her husband, scolded the Grammys for its poor historical record of rewarding Black artists and dourly noted Beyoncé’s four losses in album of the year. “Think about that,” he said.
Last year, Swift, 34, claimed her fourth win of that award (for “Midnights”), eclipsing Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon for the most victories in the Grammys’ most prestigious category. She has a total of 14 career wins and since the 2021 awards has logged 24 nominations for her huge volume of output — four studio albums, four rerecorded LPs and a mountain of bonus tracks — since the pandemic began.
For album of the year, “Cowboy Carter” and Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” — which she announced from the stage at the last Grammy ceremony, in February — will compete against Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet,” Charli XCX’s “Brat,” Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” and two niche entries: “Djesse Vol. 4,” by multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier, and “New Blue Sun,” the new-age flute album by André 3000 of the beloved hip-hop group Outkast.
Despite their many nominations over the years, this is only the second time Beyoncé and Swift have competed directly in the top album category. In 2010, Swift took that award for the first time with “Fearless,” beating Beyoncé’s “I Am … Sasha Fierce.”
The record of the year category this year, for a single recording, pits Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em” and Swift’s “Fortnight” (which features Post Malone) against some of the year’s ubiquitous singles: Carpenter’s “Espresso,” Charli XCX’s “360,” Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us” and Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather.” The category also includes “Now and Then,” the Beatles’ “last” song, assembled from a rough demo recording left by John Lennon.
Song of the year, a songwriters’ award, has nods for “Fortnight,” “Texas Hold ’Em,” “Birds of a Feather,” “Good Luck, Babe!” and “Not Like Us”; along with “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” a chart-dominating country hit by Shaboozey, who appeared on “Cowboy Carter”; Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile”; and another Carpenter hit, “Please Please Please.”
For best new artist, Carpenter, Roan and Shaboozey will face off against British songwriter and performer Raye; Florida-born rapper Doechii; mellow-groove Texas trio Khruangbin; singer-songwriter Teddy Swims; and Benson Boone, a rock singer who had a No. 2 hit this year with “Beautiful Things.”
Beyoncé has a wide field of genre nominations this year, covering pop, rap, country and Americana for various tracks on “Cowboy Carter.”
Her LP was largely ignored by the Nashville, Tennessee, establishment, garnering minimal airplay on country radio stations and being shut out of the Country Music Association Awards. But it is up for best country album at the Grammys, in a contest that may test the regional factionalism of the Recording Academy, the organization behind the awards.
She will compete against Post Malone (“F-1 Trillion”), Chris Stapleton (“Higher”), Lainey Wilson (“Whirlwind”) and a previous album of the year winner, Kacey Musgraves (“Deeper Well”). Zach Bryan, an admired songwriter with one foot in Nashville, reportedly declined to submit his hit album “The Great American Bar Scene” for the awards. (At the most recent ceremony, “I Remember Everything,” his duet with Musgraves, won best country duo/group performance.)
The nominees for songwriter of the year, non-classical, a recently added category intended to recognize non-performing songwriters, include Raye; country writers Jessi Alexander and Jessie Jo Dillon; in-demand Latin creator Edgar Barrera; and Amy Allen, who has penned hits for Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and others.
For producer of the year, non-classical, Daniel Nigro, who works with Roan and Rodrigo, is up against Alissia (Jamila Woods, Rae Khalil); Ian Fitchuk (Beyoncé, Musgraves); Mustard (Lamar); and Dernst Emile II, known as D’Mile (Lady Gaga and Mars).
For best pop vocal album, Carpenter, Eilish, Swift and Roan will face Ariana Grande’s “Eternal Sunshine.” Green Day, Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones, Idles, Jack White, the Black Crowes and Fontaines D.C. will compete for best rock album. And for best rap album, Eminem, Doechii and J. Cole will go up against a joint release by Common and Pete Rock, and another by Future and Metro Boomin (“We Don’t Trust You”).
Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, Jim Gaffigan, Nikki Glaser and Trevor Noah are up for best comedy album, and the award for best audiobook, narration and storytelling recording will go to Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand, Jimmy Carter, funk lion George Clinton or producer Guy Oldfield (for “All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words”).
This year’s awards will be broadcast live from the Crypto.com Arena by CBS and streamed on Paramount+. Last week, the Recording Academy announced that starting in 2027, it will move to ABC, Hulu and Disney+, after more than 50 years with CBS.
A total of 20,309 eligible entries were submitted for the Grammys’ 94 categories this year, and voting members of the academy will cast their ballots for the awards starting in January.