2025 Grammy Winners

Country came to town at this year’s Grammy Awards, with Beyoncé claiming the top prize for the genre.

Here are the winners in the general and the Country and American Roots fields.

 

GENERAL FIELD

Record of the Year

The Beatles, “Now and then”

Beyoncé, “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM”

Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”

Charli XCX, “360”

Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather”

Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”

Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!”

Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone, “Fortnight”

 

Album of the Year

Andre 3000, New Blue Sun

Beyoncé, COWBOY CARTER

Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet

Charli XCX, BRAT

Jacob Collier, Djesse Vol. 4

Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft

Chappell Roan, Chappell Roan The Rise & Fall of a Midwest Princess

Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department

 

Song of the Year

“A Bar Song (Tipsy)”

Sean Cook, Jerrel Jones, Joe Kent, Chibueze Collins Obinna, Nevin Sastry & Mark Williams

“BIRDS OF A FEATHER”

Billie Eilish O’Connell & Finneas O’Connell

“Die With a Smile”

 Emile II, James Fauntleroy, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars & Andrew Watt

“Fortnight”

Jack Antonoff, Austin Post & Taylor Swift

“Good Luck, Babe!”

Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, Daniel Nigro & Justin Tranter

“Not Like Us”
Kendrick Lamar

“Please Please Please”
Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff & Sabrina Carpenter

“TEXAS HOLD ‘EM”
Brian Bates, Beyoncé, Elizabeth Lowell Boland, Megan Bülow, Nate Ferraro & Raphael Saadiq

 

Best New Artist

Benson Boone

Sabrina Carpenter

Doechii

Khruangbin

RAYE

Chappell Roan

Shaboozey

Teddy Swims

 

Producer of the Year, Non-Classical

Alissia

Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II

Ian Fitchuk

Mustard

Daniel Nigro

Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical

Jessi Alexander

Amy Allen

Edgar Barrera

Jessie Jo Dillon

RAYE

(Beyoncé)

 

 

COUNTRY & AMERICAN ROOTS FIELD

 

Best Country Solo Performance

Beyoncé, “16 CARRIAGES”

Jelly Roll, “I Am Not Okay”

Kacey Musgraves, “The Architect”

Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)

Chris Stapleton, “It Takes a Woman”

 

Best Country Duo / Group Performance

Kelsea Ballerini feat. Noah Kahan, “Cowboys Cry Too”

Beyoncé feat. Miley Cyrus, “II Most Wanted”

Brothers Osborne, “Break Mine”

Dan+Shay, “Bigger Houses”

Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen, “I Had Some Help”

 

Best Country Song

“The Architect”
Shane McAnally, Kacey Musgraves & Josh Osborne

“A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
Sean Cook, Jerrel Jones, Joe Kent, Chibueze Collins Obinna, Nevin Sastry & Mark Williams

“I Am Not Okay”
Casey Brown, Jason DeFord, Ashley Gorley & Taylor Phillips

“I Had Some Help”
Louis Bell, Ashley Gorley, Hoskins, Austin Post, Ernest Smith, Ryan Vojtesak, Morgan Wallen & Chandler Paul Walters

“TEXAS HOLD ‘EM”
Brian Bates, Beyoncé, Elizabeth Lowell Boland, Megan Bülow, Nate Ferraro & Raphael Saadiq

 

Best Country Album

Beyoncé, COWBOY CARTER

Post Malone, F-1 Trillion

Kacey Musgraves, Deeper Well

Chris Stapleton, Higher

Lainey Wilson, Whirlwind

 

Best American Roots Performance

Shemekia Copeland, “Blame it On Eve”

The Fabulous Thunderbirds feat. Bonnie Raitt, Keb’ Mo, Taj Mahal, & Mick Fleetwood, “Nothing in Rambling”

Sierra Ferrell, “Lighthouse”

Rhiannon Giddens, “The Ballad of Sally Anne”

 

Best Americana Performance

Beyoncé, “YA YA”

Madison Cunningham, “Subtitles”

Madi Diaz feat. Kacey Musgraves, “Don’t Do Me Good”

Sierra Ferrell, “American Dreaming”

Sarah Jarosz, “Runaway Train”

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, “Empty Trainload of Sky”

 

Best American Roots Song

“Ahead of the Game”
Mark Knopfler

“All in Good Time”
Sam Beam

“All My Friends”
Aoife O’Donovan

“American Dreaming”
Sierra Ferrell & Melody Walker

“Blame it On Eve”
John Hahn & Will Kimbrough

 

Best Americana Album

T Bone Burnett, The Other Side

Charley Crockett, $10 Cowboy

Sierra Ferrell, Trail of Flowers

Sarah Jarosz, Polaroid Lovers

Maggie Rose, No One Gets Out Alive

Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood

 

Best Bluegrass Album

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, I Built a World

The Del McCoury Band, Songs of Love & Life

Sister Sadie, No Fear

Billy Strings, Live, Vol. 1

Tony Trischka, Earl Jam

Dan Tyminski, Live From the Ryman

Best Folk Album

American Patchwork Quartet, American Patchwork Quartet

Madi Diaz, Weird Faith

Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future

Aofie O’Donovan, All My Friends

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Woodland

11 Comments

  1. Well, this wasn’t my best run in terms of predictions– 2/4 in the General Field, and only Best Country Song in the Country Field– but this is an awfully strong crop of winners. In many categories– Chappell Roan in Best New Artist– I’m not mad to have been wrong! She wasn’t my first choice in any of her four categories, but it’s not like Sierra Ferrell isn’t one of the genre’s finest rising talents, and both Stapleton and Musgraves were recognized for quality work.

    The show itself was great, too– best Grammys broadcast in over a decade. Every performer– in contrast to the CMAs last Fall– demonstrated that they have the real mettle to make a legit career as a musician. Compare the impressive, joyful performances by Doechii, RAYE, Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims, and Roan to the tone-deaf horrors of Bailey Zimmerman or Megan Moroney, and ask why the country mainstream is so content to settle for such a gapingly untalented next generation.

  2. I can tell you a lot of country fans are losing their collective minds over Queen Bey absconding with the Best Country Album, all the while she was claiming publicly to everyone that it wasn’t a country album. It is what it is. At least it wasn’t like four years ago in 2021, when her “Beyhive”, if you will, attacked the Grammys for not giving Their Girl the Best Music FIlm award (for Black Is King) and instead giving it to Linda Ronstadt: THe SOund Of My Voice.

    Nice to see Sierra Ferrell get her four trophies; it’s a good sign for the roots field in general.

    And finally, it was wonderful to see all in attendance pay tribute to real-life heroes there that night: the men and women of the Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County fire departments who faced an unprecedented battle against two violent wind-driven firestorms that tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Kudos to those brave folks!

      • I understand why the racists are mad again, but Ronstadt fans have reason to celebrate. The only difference I’m seeing between Beyonce winning a country Grammy in 2025 and Linda Ronstadt winning a country Grammy in 1976 is that Beyonce’s album was entirely country and Linda’s was a hodgepodge that included some country on it.

        Being labeled country by Music Row is a moniker that both artists understandably rejected. I expect that many Ronstadt fans are excited over another multi-faceted musical genius making country music that’s more commercially and critically successful than anything that Music Row can conjure up. Both women understood the genre’s roots while refusing to be fenced in by the industry’s constrictive boundaries, and they made some of the best country music of their respective eras because of it.

        • Certainly a lot of us fans of Linda admire Beyonce for her moxie in stirring up the pot with Cowboy Carter, and probably Linda herself does too. I would just say that Beyonce’s flamboyant approach worked for her, and Linda’s approach, the exact opposite of Queen Bey’s, worked for her.

          I think one of the reasons Linda rejected the country moniker that got placed on her was that the powers-that-be on Music Row in 1969, when she made her first appearance on Johnny Cash’s TV show, had a very hard time with her overt Hippie look, and her approach to country which was heavily tilted in a rock direction. When they did finally accept her following the success of Heart Like A WHeel in 1974-75, where her version of the Hank Williams standard “I CAn’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You” stood alongside her incendiary take on the minor 1963 Betty Everett hit “You’re No Good”, it was on her terms and not theirs. That success, along with that of her good pal Emmylou Harris’ album Pieces Of The Sky later in 1975, pretty much laid the groundwork for the huge female country music boom of the 1990’s (IMHO).

    • “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.” – Linda Ronstadt

  3. I don’t think Cowboy Carter is Beyoncé’s best album–I’d argue Renaissance and even B’Day and 4 are better–but I’m thrilled she won both AOTY and Best Country Album (doubly impressed with her very humble, very gracious acceptance speeches too). Also happy Sabrina won a couple; she took me completely off guard last year with what was maybe my favorite album of ’24.

    • I’m with you on pretty well all of this. I’d say it’s her third-best album– behind Lemonade and Renaissance— in what is a very strong catalog. Hell, I’m on record here in finding at least a dozen country albums by women of color superior to CC in 2024. I’m surprised– pleasantly so– that she won Best Country Album, even if I thought she had the second-best album of the five nominated. I’m not surprised she won Album of the Year, deservingly so over some strong competition. Her speeches were concise and said what needed to be said in the moment– recognizing genre as a means of keeping artists “in their place,” and then tipping her cowboy hat to Linda Martell. Middling white artists have been recognized for far, far less worthwhile work than CC, and that notion seems to sit uncomfortable with some folks today.

      I said on BlueSky that Carpenter’s stagey, funny-on-purpose performance just made me all the more irate that the country music industry didn’t embrace Laura Bell Bundy, which was bringing that same energy (and even better singing) to the country space a generation ago. Carpenter’s a delight; I love how she uses her cleverness to make herself the butt of the joke or to punch up.

  4. If nothing else Cowboy Carter was an ambitious album, and it’s one that was rooted in a lot of this history of country music. It received critical raves, went to #1 on the Billboard 200, and it certainly laid the groundwork that allowed “A Bar Song” to rule the Hot 100 for so long. When you then add in that it all happened in a year where MAGA reclaimed the political game, I’d say Cowboy Carter is a hugely deserving winner.

    • Good point about Shaboozey’s hit. It’s rare than an album is able to demonstrate its impact on the larger musical landscape so quickly. You don’t have the biggest hit of 2024 without Cowboy Carter paving the way for it.

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