GRAMMYs and Nepotism – The Awards that Go Hand in Hand with Privilege

The 2025 GRAMMY award nominations were announced November 8th, with a slew of both newcomers and industry veterans being recognized alike by the Recording Academy. 

According to their website, the mission statement of the GRAMMYs is ‘to recognize excellence in the recording arts and sciences, cultivate the well-being of the music community, and ensure that music remains an indelible part of our culture.’ 

Yet with this year’s list of nominations, preceded from the hundreds more that came before, the only thing the GRAMMYs continues on is its yearly tradition of controversial nominations that reward artists that commonly fall short of the expected merit.

Arguably one of the biggest snubs in GRAMMYs history took place in the 2023 awards ceremony when Harry Styles took home Album of the Year for his album, ‘Harry’s House’. Beating out industry heavyweights ABBA, Adele, Kendrick Lamar, and most notably Beyonce’s Renaissance, viewers were left bewildered at the complete left field choice. Both critics and fans had lauded Renaissance, citing it to be the choice for the top award of the night, so Styles’s win sparked some outrage and just plain confusion.

Styles’s acceptance speech raised controversy, with him stating, “…this doesn’t happen to people like me very often”, standing as a white male winner in a category that included many people of color. To add fuel to the fire, viewers noticed the GRAMMY’s Twitter account posted a strange congratulatory, “Fun fact: The voice at the beginning of “As It Was” is the daughter of our very own #GRAMMYs producer, @BenWinston!”, leaving them to believe Styles’s favors within the Academy had segwayed further chances to winning. 

However, Styles is not the only artist who has benefitted from a hand behind closed doors. This year’s nominations, while seemingly progressive, were not fully free from criticism. 

2025 Album of the Year Nominations

• André 3000 – “New Blue Sun”
• Beyoncé – “Cowboy Carter”
• Billie Eilish – “Hit Me Hard and Soft”
• Chappell Roan – “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”
• Charli XCX -“Brat”
• Jacob Collier – “Djesse Vol. 4”
• Sabrina Carpenter – “Short n’ Sweet”
• Taylor Swift – “The Tortured Poets Department”

Six of the eight nominees were women- the GRAMMYs had seemingly taken strides for further equality in the nominations. The only male artists in the category were Andre 3000 and Jacob Collier, neither of which provided any significant place on the roster of honor save for their maleness. 

Breakthrough babe Sabrina Carpenter may be well deserved for her smash success ‘Short and Sweet’, yet trails skepticism for her allegations of heavy Spotify autoplay for her hits such as ‘Nonsense’ and ‘Espresso’, possibly heralded by label Universal Music Publishing Group owning 3.30% of Spotify shares. Critical darling Billie Eilish’s tune ‘Birds of a Feather’ may fall into the same speculation, alongside her many award wins noticeably backed by accusations of nepotism and her industry parents. 

Despite being a critical step down in quality, Taylor Swift’s album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ managed to secure multiple nods. Experimental yet culturally obscure jazz artist Jacob Collier may have previously dabbled in the Academy’s cabinet, with his 2020 effort ‘Djesse Vol. 3’ also claiming a spot on the 2021 ceremony’s AOTY nomination list. His nod this year for ‘Vol. 4’ seems thrown in for gender diversity and a handshake.

As a critical aggregate highly respected by the music industry, the GRAMMYs may never be fully free from controversy. While there have definitely been well deserving nominations and wins in the past that deserve praise, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from normalizing more artists of organic merit to be acknowledged with the golden gramophone. 

Tune into the 67th GRAMMY awards on Sunday, February 2nd to see the winners. 

• awards
• grammys
• music
• nepotism
• popularculture