2026 Grammy Results Observations and Questions

The Grammys were on February 1st, and I think it's safe to say there were a lot of surprise winners (as evident by how poorly I did with my predictions). While I haven't released an episode reacting to the winners yet due to being on my honeymoon (this will come after I return), I wanted to write a blog post related to them (I was looking for something to do while on a train as my wife was sleeping). Beyond considering what awards I either predicted accurately or didn't, there are several questions and observations I have resulting from the winners. In this post, I am going to discuss 10 that rose from the results.

Is Bad Bunny the biggest artist in the world?

Before I get into this question, the natural response from U.S. citizens in particular is that Taylor Swift or Beyonce has a stronger case here. While reasonable, Bad Bunny is bigger than both in most (if not all) countries where Spanish is the primary language, which isn't surprising. After Bad Bunny won Album of the Year, this question is a natural question to bring up, though it is an overreaction in most situations. That said, Bad Bunny's album is the first album to win this award that was entirely (or predominantly) in a foreign language (while Supernatural by Santana had some Spanish and Getz/Gilberto by Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto had some Portuguese, both albums were predominantly in English) and the first Latin album to win this award since Supernatural won in 2000. The just counterargument is that the most popular artist has not always won this award, as the winner was previously often determined by process of elimination or based on genre until the Grammys expanded the Big 4 awards to have 8 nominees in 2019 (outside of the 2 year stretch where they had 10 nominees each, which I thought was too much). Since then, winners have included Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Harry Styles, and Billie Eilish while they were in their commercial prime and most popular stages. The counterpoint to this is that Kacey Musgraves and Jon Batiste also won while not the most popular artists with albums nominated, but both of those two years did not have any standout candidate or group of candidates that felt obvious (it is worth noting that I predicted Musgraves would win in 2019, but this was prior to my podcast so I don't have proof; I also was not confident in my prediction at all, for what it's worth). This is telling for this year, as I indicated in the podcast I recorded with my General Field predictions, since I didn't think there was a standout candidate (while I thought it would either be Lady Gaga or Sabrina Carpenter winning, I didn't think there was a clear winner there). While recent years with the Big 4 have suggested chaos would ensue, I think that it is telling that Bad Bunny bucked the trend (albeit a trend with barely any sample size) and won. This doesn't automatically make him the biggest artist in the world, but it helps his case for the argument, which I personally believe is true at this point in time.

Is Kendrick Lamar also a pop star in addition to hip-hop star?

Before getting into this argument, I do want to provide how I define a pop star vs. a rap star. A rap star is someone who is big in rap/hip hop and usually either is performing massive concert venues, releases popular albums, or has several hits within the genre; for example, Tyler, the Creator has been a superstar in the genre while only just really crossing over with singles that were big in pop. While most define a pop star as someone who is popular in mainstream music, I don't think that's the right definition; for example, Foo Fighters are rock stars, but don't make sense as pop stars despite being huge in mainstream music. I think that in order to be a pop star, there has to be an expectation that most singles is going to be big in mainstream music while the artist is a household name (it's worth noting that there's an exception when an artist has been established for a long time and still draws huge crowds with nostalgia shows, such as New Kids on the Block). That said, I do think there is a distinction because there is a style of rap that is considered more melodic and more pop-adjacent, which is usually affiliated with rapping that involves singing, R&B influenced rap, or trap music. While Damn certainly made a case initially and other songs hinted towards it, he didn't seem to go as all-out with a more melodic sound until we got "Luther" in particular. This completed an arc that I felt like was enhanced with "Not Like Us". While some might think this is not a point worth considering given Lamar's success and acclaim, the pop star tag has been left for rappers who are polarizing in the genre, most notably Drake. Can Lamar hold both titles and still be acclaimed in all? It's a difficult feat, but I don't see why not.

Billie Eilish is still very relevant with the Grammys.

I want to clarify this by saying that Billie Eilish is still immensely popular, as she is coming off a huge tour, where every venue that she perfomed at which publicly reported tickets sold indicated that her concert had sold out, and another commercially and critically successful album. That said, after the hugely successful "Birds of a Feather" struck out at the Grammys, it made sense to expect that "Wildflower", the fourth and least successful single from Hit Me Hard and Soft which was only nominated for Song and Record of the Year, would strike out as well. Clearly, that logic was wrong; despite there not being a clear favorite for this award (it reached the point that several odds sites listed "Golden" as the favorite, which I thought was insane), it is interesting to still see this victory. When an artist has immediate Grammy success, it's often not the case that they have success in the big 4 awards for a significant period of time; I think the best comparison is Adele, who did not win any major awards with her fourth album, which was the third where she was nominated for a big 4 award other than Best New Artist, corresponding with Eilish's career arc (albeit the timespan was shorter for Eilish's albums than for that of Adele's). Beyond that, Eilish and Finneas, her brother and co-writer, are now the most awarded songwriters in this award with 3. It really is a historic 7 ceremony stretch, especially since she also won a big 4 award 7 times, not to mention 10 total awards in 34 nominations. I'm curious to see how long this award success lasts.

How beneficial is a late boost in popularity to Grammy awards?

There was a major disconnect between my prediction for Best New Artist, rooted in historical trends (more on that in a minute), vs. sites with odds of winners. The big question for me was whether the winner would be Leon Thomas, who also was nominated for Album of the Year, as well as several other awards, or Olivia Dean, whose increase in popularity coincided with the nomination and voting periods (I also thought Alex Warren had a decent chance). Naturally, my first curiosity is how real a boost in popularity is in odds for winning. The problem is that there isn't that much of a consistent precedent for this with the Big 4 awards, especially since there is a natural boost in popularity and streams once the nominees are announced (especially with Best New Artist). The closest comparison is when an artist releases an album during the voting period, which sometimes helps increase the odds of being nominated (I think this happened this year with Tame Impala and previously with Taylor Swift), though there have been countless examples where it didn't. At this time, I think a late popularity boost doesn't increase the odds of winning due to the nature of the voting, though I'm not certain about getting nominated (I'd lean towards no at this time); we'll see in the future how much of a fluke this is.

There were several trends that did not hold true this year.

As I listed in the introduction, my predictions for Grammy winners did not go well this year. While there were several where I chose the wrong winner out of a few and others that I didn't know and chose the wrong one, there were several that I predicted based on historical trends that were incorrect. The only award from the General Field that I was wrong based on historical data was when I predicted Leon Thomas would win because a nominee who is nominated for at least one other Big 4 award always wins this award (at least this is true in this century), but Olivia Dean won. There were 15 other awards that I was incorrect about due to straying from historical trends, including the following trends:

• Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance both had winners that were not nominated for Song or Record of the Year.
• Tame Impala became the first rock artist to win Best Dance/Electronic Recording who didn't collaborate with an electronic artist (incidentally, Tame Impala won last year with a collaboration with Justice).
• The version of "Changes" from Back to the Beginning became the first live performance to win Best Rock Performance.
• "Birds" by Turnstile became the first song that wasn't even arguably a metal song to win Best Metal Performance (more on that in a bit).
• This year was the first time that a song nominated for Best Rap Performance and either Song or Record of the Year didn't win Best Rap Performance. I didn't predict this song ("Anxiety"), but the song I did predict ("TV Off") wasn't submitted because "Luther" was Kendrick Lamar's submission; I still think any Lamar submission would have been nominated for Song or Record of the Year, so I'm still considering my prediction of "TV Off" not being accurate to fall in this oddity.
• Historical trends would suggest that Willie Nelson had good odds to win at least one album award; he won neither of the ones he was nominated for.
• Jason Isbell previously won 6 of the 7 Grammys that he was nominated for; this year, he won none of the 3.
• Kirk Franklin did not win Best Gospel Performance/Song for the first time he was nominated when a performer.
• The last time Ruben Blades lost Best Tropical Latin Album was 1996; on top of that, he never lost when collaborating with Robert Delgado & Orquesta.
• In Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording, the only two times a recording either narrated by or about a liberal political figure didn't win since 2014 was when a posthumous nomination occurred; this year was the first time since 2013 where a liberal political figure lost to someone alive.
• Since 2015, the soundtrack for a hit musical film is almost always the winner of Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media (the exception being 2021, when JoJo Rabbit beat Frozen 2). This year, Sinners beat both Wicked and KPop Demon Hunters.
• The last time an album that won Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical was either not a nominatee for Album of the Year, one in consideration, or an album notable in Grammy circles was 2013. While there wasn't an album that really had a chance for an Album of the Year nomination, it should be considered an upset that Pino Palladino and Blake Mills beat Alison Krauss & Union Station and Japanese Breakfast.

While this isn't the sole reason my predictions were so bad by any means, it does demonstrate how weird this year was for a lot of the awards.

What do the Country awards mean going forward?

Country fans and artists have been puzzled by the nominations and winners for several years, as country pop artists typically appear to be "snubbed" for the awards in this field and rarely win. A look at the most popular country releases of the year and the winners of each Grammy award often feels like there is a disconnect with where the genre is. I believe that this is due to the fact that the genre is in the same field as the American Roots awards, providing a different population of voters since voters who are voting for this field would have to vote for everything in this field. This year, the awards seemed to move a few different directions. Best Country Solo Performance was won by Chris Stapleton, who is the biggest winner of this award and is typically the safest prediction. A duet by Shaboozey and Jelly Roll, who had the most popular song nominated for the award with "Amen", won Best Country Duo/Group Performance. Jelly Roll, who releast the most popular album nominated, won in Best Contemporary Country Album, beating Miranda Lambert (who won the most out of the nominees) and Kelsea Ballerini (who I thought would win). Zach Top, who released the most popular album nominated, won the inaugural Best Traditional Country Albums, despite my belief that he was least likely to win by far and that the award was Willie Nelson's to lose. Just when it seemed like there was a trend of popular artists winning these awards, Tyler Childers, who got his start more affiliated with American Roots than country, won Best Country Song. While there seemed to be a shift towards popular artists winning 3 of the awards over artists the Grammys would go for, Stapleton and Childers do hold this back a bit. What does this mean for the future of the award? With the mixed signals, I have no idea; I don't want to call it a fluke since it's worth monitoring, but I'm not ready to say we have a shift yet.

Do genres matter for the Grammys anymore?

The reason this question even came up this year was because Turnstile was nominated in Best Metal Performance for a punk song and Tyler, the Creator was nominated in Best Alternative Album for an old school hip-hop album (ironically, his album nominated for Best Rap Album was more influenced by alternative rap, but I digress). The problem with asking this question now is that it assumes this is a new issue. In this decade, there were instances where Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile submitted albums under an American Roots award, but then were moved to Pop despite the submitted field being more fitting. There have also been multiple instances where submissions have been nominated in metal, jazz, traditional pop, R&B, or rock didn't make sense in the awards they were submitted to. There was even some minor controversy in Classical when Jon Batiste was submitted for a composition which a lot of classical composers and writers didn't think was classical at all other than the fact that it was called a symphony. To bring us back to the main question: do genres matter for the Grammys anymore? No; they never did.

Was the inaugural Best Album Cover award a success?

When the Grammys announced that there would be an award rewarding album covers, the general consensus was that nobody knew what direction they were going to take with this, especially since there is a wide range of opinions related to album covers. That said, I don't think anybody expected the nominees we got: one of my favorite covers of the eligibility period from Tyler, the Creator, Bad Bunny's cover that featured to lawn chairs (while there was cultural relevance, I don't think a lot of people were anticipating such a simple cover to be nominated), a cover from Djo that was busy and has faced some accusations from folks online of using AI (I don't know the legitimacy of the claims, but I've seen several), and two covers that didn't feel right to be nominated (from albums by Perfume Genius and Wet Leg). Ultimately, Tyler, the Creator's cover won, but was this process what everyone had hoped for? It might not have been, but I would argue that this isn't a big deal at all for one reason: this award was not televised. There would have been more of a focus on the award if it had been televised, but the majority of the awards are not televised during the main ceremony because there are too many to include when they include all the performances and fluff thay they add in. In my opinion, the correct one won, but it wasn't like we were going to see a situation where Jethro Tull beat Metallica in a metal award the first year it was offered (needless to say, the award was reworked the following year). I guess that means that it was enough of a success to have the award going forward until they purge a bunch of awards.

How much does promotion help with awards once already nominated?

Something I have indicated on my podcast is that promotion usually plays a big role in the nominations, though I didn't discuss it as much with the awards prior to this year. The only time I really cared about it is when I threw my hands up and just needed something to help; namely, I had no idea what to do with several awards in the Rock, Metal & Alternative field. In this field, we had two instances where labels utilized a good amount of promotion with varying results: Turnstile ended up with 2 wins, while Hayley Williams walked away with none. There were several nominations that received promotion, though this year there didn't seem to be as many once the nominations came out. It makes sense to help with getting nominated with increasing odds, but once nominations are announced, is the increase in odds worth it? If there are 5 nominees for an award with no clear frontrunner, if odds of winning due to promoting rise to around 30-40%, is it worth promoting? Many labels didn't think so, and I'm not sure I blame them unless a label or artist wants to receive an award. This logic doesn't account for the nominees that had no chance of winning, which rarely make sense to promote more than a little bit. All in all, promoting sometimes helps awards, but it depends on the circumstances.

What should we make of a mixture of new faces receiving awards and old faces receiving awards?

While there is always a mixture of newer artists, artists in their prime, and old familiar faces, this year seemed to have a lot of artists who were winning their first Grammy. While there are some artists who have been established for a long time that just won their first Grammy (such as The Cure), there were so many first time winners compared to usual, which is surprising given that historical trends indicate that this doesn't happen as much. Some of these include Best New Artist nominees Olivia Dean, Leon Thomas, and Lola Young, as well as Turnstile, Kehlani, Zach Top, Durand Bernarr, Youngblud, Jelly Roll, Shaboozey, and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso. It feels unusual, but I don't think we should make much of it. I thought there were several awards that didn't have a clear frontrunner which allowed for some wackiness to happen. If this happens again within the next couple year, then we should treat it as a new trend, but we should treat it as something interesting for now.

What did you think of the Grammys? Were there any awards you were surprised by? Let me know in the comments!