The 67th Annual Grammy Awards, slated for Feb. 2, will feature record-setting representation for women that punctuates a banner year for female artists.
Women account for six of the eight nominees in three major categories: album of the year, record of the year, and song of the year. The best new artist field is split 50-50 with two women frontrunners (Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan). Meanwhile, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift will go head-to-head in all of the awards ceremony’s top categories.
While women faced some setbacks in 2024—from shrinking representation in C-suite positions to a continued erosion of bodily autonomy—female musical acts still found ways to persevere. They raised the bar on contemporary music, sent strong messages with their compositions and lyrics, and broke more than a few glass ceilings along the way.
Chappell Roan at the 2024 MTV Awards • Photo: DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy.
It took the Grammys decades to get proactive about representation
The first Grammy Awards were held in 1959 to award the best musical acts of 1958. The commencement of the annual awards represented music’s biggest night—but representation of women in the nominations and awards was paltry. For the first few decades of its existence, the Grammy Awards were heavily skewed in favor of male performers in terms of nominations and winners.
While certain awards have always been gender neutral—album of the year, best new artist, record of the year, and song of the year—other categories across country, pop, R&B, and rock were split to highlight male and female acts, such as “top male pop performer” and “top female pop performer.” These award categories went gender-neutral in 2012. Opening the competition up like this didn’t do much for women representation: A full 86.6% of Grammy nominees from 2013-2021 were men.
Grammy nods and trophies are, of course, determined by voting members of The Recording Academy. The diversity of that electorate has direct implications for how diverse the nominees and winners are. After years of backlash, the Academy in 2019 vowed to diversify its voting bloc, including adding 2,500 women to its voting body by 2025. That goal was surpassed early, with the Academy announcing in October 2024 that 3,000 women had been added.
At last year’s 66th Grammy Awards, women won in all major categories for the first time.
Queen Bey is the night’s leading lady
Leading the field this year is Beyoncé, who is now the most-Grammy-nominated woman in a single year with 11 nods and the most-nominated artist of all time with 99. The genre-bending tracks and dozens of collaborators on her feminist, country masterpiece “Cowboy Carter” expanded Beyoncé’s eligibility into more Grammy categories than her competitors, with recognition in song, record, and album of the year as well as in country, pop, rap, and Americana. If she wins album of the year, Beyoncé will be the first Black woman to do so this century.
Queen Bey has 32 Grammy wins under her belt, another all-time record (followed by conductor Georg Solti with 31).
Other top nominees this year include Charli XCX and Billie Eilish with seven nods (tied for the year with Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone), and six apiece for Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift (who boasts 14 wins and 52 nominations, not to mention four albums of the year).
In country music, Kacy Musgraves is nominated in five categories: best Americana performance, best country album, best country solo performance, best country song, and best engineered album, non-classical. Doechii is the most-nominated woman rapper this year.
Taylor Swift • Photo: Shanna Madison/Chicago Tribune, TNS/Alamy.
2024 was rife with musical milestones
The 2025 Grammys offer a multitude of superlatives among women artists.
Two categories this year are populated entirely by women: best pop solo performance and best pop vocal album. And there’s more representation by women than ever in best metal performance: Poppy (with Knocked Loose) for “Suffocate;” Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante for “Cellar Door;” and Marina Viotti with Gojira and Victor Le Masne for “Mea Culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)”). If a woman wins, she’ll be the first to do so in this category.
Billie Eilish in 2024 tied Taylor Swift with five nominations for best pop solo performance. She is now also the first artist to be nominated across the entire, newly updated Grammy pop landscape in the same year: best dance pop recording with “L’Amour De Ma Vie (Over Now Extended Edit);” best pop duo/group performance for “Guess” with Charli XCX; best pop solo performance with “Birds of a Feather;” and best pop vocal album for “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” Best dance pop recording was added in 2024 at the 66th Grammys.
All eyes on Swift, Beyoncé
The Beyoncé-Swift matchup across major categories will likely be the most-watched aspect of the evening, especially with Beyoncé having never netted album of the year even after four nominations for the prize.
Meanwhile, Swift has taken home the night’s most prestigious award a record-setting four times: for “Fearless” in 2010; “1989” in 2016; “Folklore” in 2021; and “Midnights” in 2024. Her 2024 win nudged out previously tied record-holders Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, and Stevie Wonder.
The Grammys will take place at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. CBS and Paramount+ will air the ceremony live.
