The Grammys are coming up, set to be released February 1st, 2026. Feeling overwhelmed by all of the artists and categories the nomination list contains? Let’s go over the main ones, what they mean and who’s up to win each one.
The main things people look for when watching the Grammys is record of the year, album of the year and song of the year. Despite these big three categories, however, there are actually 95 different awards total. All of them are for different genres’ best albums, everything from best folk album to the best global music album. There’s also plenty of categories for movie soundtracks, musical soundtracks, music videos and performances. All of these have plenty of nominees, whether they be mainstream or otherwise.
But, back to the big 3.
Record of the Year is the category that honors the entirety of a song, notably producing, mixing, performance of the musicians and the process as a whole. The nominations for Record of the Year are as follows: DtMF by Bad Bunny, Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter, Anxiety by Doechii, WILDFLOWER by Billie Eilish, Abracadabra by Lady Gaga, luther by Kendrick Lamar with SZA, The Subway by Chappell Roan, and APT by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars.
“I think they are great and very interesting songs,” junior Jay Cameron says.
The next category is Album of the Year. This category recognises similar things as Record of the Year, however it focuses on the entirety of the album instead of honing in on a specific song or track. It is not based on sales. The nominations for Album of the Year are as follows: DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS by Bad Bunny, SWAG by Justin Bieber, Man’s Best Friend by Sabrina Carpenter, Let God Sort Em Out by Clipse and Pusha T & Malice, MAYHEM by Lady Gaga, GNX by Kendrick Lamar, MUTT by Leon Thomas, and CHROMAKOPIA by Tyler, The Creator.
“CHROMAKOPIA should win. I love that album. Son of Spergy by Daniel Caesar should have been nominated, though,” junior Jillian Mariano says.
Lastly, Song of the Year. What separates this from Record of the Year is its celebration of the songwriter itself. However, it’s obvious there’s a lot of overlap between this category and the other, as there’s a bunch of overlap between all of the top 3 categories. The nominations are as follows (The songwriters are in parenthesis after the song): Abracadabra by Lady Gaga (Lady Gaga, Henry Walter & Andrew Watt), Anxiety by Doechii (Jaylah Hickmon), APT by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars (Amy Allen, Christopher Brody Brown, Rogét Chahayed,Omer Fedi, Philip Lawrence, Bruno Mars, Chae Young Park, Theron Thomas & Henry Walter), DtMF by Bad Bunny (Marco Daniel Borrero, Scott Dittrich, Benjamin Falik, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, Hugo René Sención Sanabria, Tyler Spry & Roberto José Rosado Torres), Golden from KPop Demon Hunters (EJAE, Park Hong Jun, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo & Mark Sonnenblick), Luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA (Jack Antonoff, Roshwita Larisha Bacha, Matthew Bernard, Scott Bridgeway, Sam Dew, Ink, Kendrick Lamar, Solána Rowe, Mark Anthony Spears & Kamasi Washington), Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter (Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff & Sabrina Carpenter), and WILDFLOWER by Billie Eilish (Billie Eilish O’Connell & Finneas O’Connell).
As seen, there are a lot of albums, songwriters, producers, and artists that come together to make music possible. The Grammys are a way to celebrate the achievement of all of these people’s hard work.
