Alison's Thoughts on the Grammy Nominees

One of my stupidest ideas for sure

So, I’ve been suffering from a bit of writer’s block lately, at least when it comes to this blog. I’ve written a lot, but not all that much that fits in the niche of this blog. But this morning, I watched a video by Mic The Snare, a YouTuber who makes videos about music and pop culture that I enjoy quite a bit. It was about his thoughts on the 2025 Grammys, as well as some takes on who he thought would win certain awards.

Mic The Snare does these sorts of videos every year, and I enjoy watching them even though I don’t really pay all that much attention to the Recording Academy and have never watched a Grammy ceremony in my life. After I finished watching this year’s video, I had the thought enter my head that it could be cool to listen to and do a little mini-review of each of the eight albums nominated for Album of the Year.

Now, to be clear, the Grammys are tomorrow. By the time you’re reading this, there’s a very good chance they will have already happened. These albums are a collective length of 7 hours and 49 minutes.

As I write this, it’s about 9:30am AEDT on the 2nd of February. The Grammys will air at 12pm AEDT on the 3rd of February. I’m going to try to listen to all eight albums nominated for Album of the Year in between that time, in the order provided by the Grammys. Those albums are:

• New Blue Sun — André 3000

• COWBOY CARTER — Beyoncé

• Short n’ Sweet — Sabrina Carpenter

• BRAT — Charli xcx

• Djesse Vol. 4 — Jacob Collier

• HIT ME HARD AND SOFT — Billie Eilish

• The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess — Chappell Roan

• THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT — Taylor Swift

I’ve listened to most of these albums before (with two exceptions), so I’ll provide you a short blurb of my thoughts, my most and least favourite tracks, and a pithy 10-star rating. I’ll conclude by stealing from Mic The Snare again, with my takes on who I want to win Album of the Year, who I think will win Album of the Year, and who would cause the most cultural chaos by winning Album of the Year.

New Blue Sun — André 3000

And of course, we’re starting with one of the two nominees I haven’t listened to. I mean, I doubt most of you have heard André 3000’s flute record either. And I wish I had more time to ruminate on both of those two — I’m not really the sort to have solid opinions about an album after the first time I hear it, it usually takes me a couple of relistens.

But especially I wish I had more time to sit with this one. I mean, again, for emphasis, it’s an eight-track instrumental flute album with an average track length of like 10 minutes. There’s no way I’m going to have any solid thoughts on this.

And, well, yeah. While the two albums don’t really share much in common, I was reminded a bit of the first time I listened to Ethel Cain’s Perverts — also an ambient, mainly instrumental record, albeit with much darker sonic tones. I thought it was cool, but I didn’t really know what to make of it.

All of the track names are really long and stupid so I won’t be dignifying them by using them here. I quite liked Tracks 4, 7, and 8. Maybe it was just that I hadn’t settled into the vibe yet, but I didn’t find anything special about the opener, which was also nominated for Best Instrumental Composition.

I could see myself listening to this if I need something to put in the background. It’s definitely a good record and there’s some cool stuff in it. Not really knowledgeable enough about the genre to say much more, though — and for that same reason, I’ve omitted the best/worst tracks. Just can’t make too much of a judgement.

Rating: 6.5/10

COWBOY CARTER — Beyoncé

Probably the first Album of the Year nominee to reference the award in its lyrics!¹ I’m also kind of terrified to talk about this one also, which is weird because I am more familiar with Beyoncé’s discography and I mainly liked this.

But it’s also the first Beyoncé record in a while that feels like it has something to prove, which sits strangely with me. Both with the aforementioned AOTY reference and the broader context of this being a sort-of-but-not-really country record which, unsurprisingly, got no airplay at all in Nashville.

The strongest bits of it are around the start and finish. I looove ‘AMERIICAN REQUIEM’, and the callback to it on the closer AMEN is cool as well. ‘YA YA’, as always, has my body shaking like the Pfizer vaccine². Hell, the whole run from ‘YA YA’ to ‘TYRANT’ is awesome. ‘TYRANT’ whips so badly in a way I can’t even fully describe. It cooks.

And I guess it kind of drags out in the middle but there aren’t really any obvious cuts — aside from ‘JOLENE’, but, I mean, come on. Of course Beyoncé was going to cover Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’.

I also love that we got tracks like ‘II MOST WANTED’, an earnest love ballad between Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, and the deeply weird (complimentary) ‘DAUGHTER’, featuring Beyoncé singing in Italian.

I don’t know! It throws a bunch of stuff at the wall, not all of it sticks, but I respect it a lot. If it was a slightly shorter record I’d be downright rhapsodic about it. If it was longer I wouldn’t really know what to do with it. It’s not Beyoncé’s best, but it’s pretty cool!

Best tracks: ‘AMERIICAN REQUIEM’, ‘II MOST WANTED’, ‘YA YA’, ‘TYRANT’

Worst tracks: ‘JOLENE’, ‘SWEET ★ HONEY ★ BUCKIIN’

Rating: 6.5/10

Short n’ Sweet — Sabrina Carpenter

There’s something about Sabrina Carpenter’s whole vibe that can strike me as just a bit unnatural sometimes. Like that album cover, for example. She’s so pretty that it looks AI generated. I almost don’t trust it. It’s too polished and perfect. Anyway, this is me saying that I think this album is quite good.

I guess I started with that to lay out my potential objection to the Sabrina Carpenter project. Which doesn’t not come up. ‘Espresso’ is a great song, fun in the right ways and mind-destroyingly catchy. The second and third singles — ‘Please Please Please’ and ‘Taste’ — do kind of feel like lesser attempts to capture lightning in a bottle again and occasionally feel a bit uncanny valley, especially ‘Please Please Please’. But I like them both!

Honestly, the bops on this album are probably my favourite tracks. They feel kind of low-key but still authentic and really fun. It’s the first album so far that doesn’t feel like a Statement and instead just a collection of some good-to-great songs. In that way, it’s a great pop album.

I liked the ballads less but they fit in well, even if I’m a bit meh on the one-two punch of ‘Lie to Girls’ —> ‘Don’t Smile’ to close us out. But I guess most of all, I’m glad that this album mainly isn’t polished and perfect? Like, it hardly swings for the fences, but it sits in its own little lane in a way that’s very enjoyable. It doesn’t ever feel grating or like it’s trying to impress you. It’s just there in the best way.

Best tracks: ‘Coincidence’, ‘Espresso’, ‘Dumb & Poetic’

Worst tracks: ‘Sharpest Tool’, ‘Slim Pickins’

Rating: 7/10

BRAT — Charli xcx

Probably the biggest cultural event of the year, if nothing else. It feels a bit impossible to talk about BRAT without talking about The Culture, especially after Brat Summer and “kamala IS brat”.³ But I don’t want to, so instead I’m going to talk about my history with Charli XCX.

I’d been a Charli fan before BRAT came out but not in a terribly cool way. I’d only really listened to 2021’s Crash, Charli’s self-described pop sellout era and an album she seems to not like very much.

An abortive planned post for this blog would have seen me listen to all of Charli’s albums in the lead-up to the release of BRAT, but ultimately I didn’t get past True Romance.⁴ So what I’m saying is I knew of hyperpop Charli before BRAT, but hadn’t ever really listened to hyperpop Charli.

Anyway, I guess my point is that BRAT is a great record in its own right, but I think I appreciate it more as a success for Charli XCX than as an album on its own — and to be clear, I appreciate it a good deal. I just might not have picked it as the 10/10 soundtrack of the summer.

But I get why it is! I loved lead-single ‘Von dutch’ from the first moment I heard it, and while ‘360’ took a while to click for me, it’s aggressively sticky and I like it a lot.

I mainly like it when the vibe turns more confessional, also — although, to be honest, I always listen to the Lorde version of ‘Girl, so confusing’ and I realised on this listen that I kind of just hate the OG Charli second verse. But ‘I think about it all the time’ and ‘I might say something stupid’ both cut deep, and I think they’re both great tracks.

I don’t know if this is a controversial take or not but ‘Sympathy is a knife’ is probably the most Brat song on this record, in every sense of the word. It’s messy, propulsive, self-hating, racked with doubt, and also just fucking goes hard as hell. It’s so good.

Overall, I really liked BRAT. Maybe not my personal Album of the Year, but it’s a great album and I like it a lot!

Best tracks: ‘360’, ‘Sympathy is a knife’, ‘Von dutch’, ‘Apple’, ‘B2b’

Worst track: ‘Girl, so confusing’

Rating: 7.5/10

Djesse Vol. 4 — Jacob Collier

I've never listened to Jacob Collier's music before, I don't think, so this is obviously the second album on this list I haven't heard. Given that most of the buzz I've heard around him has been because of the Grammys, I feel like he's the one person here who I could probably get away with blatantly disrespecting.

And from the first moments of this album I had the thought that I just instinctively did not like this guy's voice. That's probably a needlessly mean thing to say, but from the opening notes it was radiating Not My Thing.

And yeah. Collier is a very talented musician and multi-instrumentalist, and I'm sure that technically this is very impressive but I'm sorry, it's just not for me.

The really maximalist tracks, like ‘100,000 Voices’ and ‘WELLLL’, tested my patience a lot. Most of the experiments on this album just didn't work for me. It reminded me a lot of my worries for Short n' Sweet — it really came off as polished and designed to impress me. And I’m just not very impressed, most of the time.

Granted, there's some cool moments. It feels very petty of me to say that my favourite tracks on here are the ones where Jacob Collier doesn't even sing, but the Lizzy McAlpine/John Mayer track works better than it should. The Chris Martin/aespa one fires a bit too much off all cylinders but I still enjoyed it.

But overall this just isn't for me. At its worst I really hated it, at its best I tolerated it. Jacob Collier is clearly a really talented guy, but I feel like I'm clutching at straws trying to say something nice about this record.

Best tracks: ‘Never Gonna Be Alone’, ‘Over You’

Worst tracks: ‘She Put Sunshine’, ‘Cinnamon Crush’, ‘A Rock Somewhere’, ‘World O World’

Rating: 3.5/10

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT — Billie Eilish

This is probably my favourite album of the year. I've always been a Billie Eilish fan, and I think this album is probably her best.

Part of the vision behind this was to create, as I recall Eilish describing it, "an album-ass album" — i:e, something that functioned as a collective body of work rather than as individual songs. This was part of the reasoning in not releasing any advance singles.

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT definitely works better taken as a whole. The transitions from ‘SKINNY’ into ‘LUNCH’, as well as ‘BITTERSUITE’ into ‘BLUE’, are really cool, and I love how the record reaches a peak with the glitchy curse-out of ‘L'AMOUR DE MA VIE’.

Also it is probably her gayest album yet. Yes, there's the song about eating pussy. But there's also the one about abandonment and loss named after a Studio Ghibli film, the one about envying your partner's ex and picturing her in your position in moments of romantic intimacy, and the song where she personifies herself as her own stalker.

Sonically, this album also reaches new heights for Eilish. Her vocal runs on ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’ are super cool, and the instrumentation of ‘SKINNY’ is really intricate and lovely. I just love how HIT ME HARD AND SOFT sounds and flows.

If there's a moment the album falters, it's probably penultimate track ‘BITTERSUITE’. And while one could say that closer ‘BLUE’ drags on for too long, I've really grown to appreciate the synergy of its two parts and how it slowly paces out into the sort of quasi-rap you'd have seen on her debut. It's a really beautiful song and, maybe, my favourite on the record?

Anyway, this album rules. I like it a lot. I wouldn't say there's a bad song on it, and when it's great, it's truly something.

Best tracks: ‘CHIHIRO’, ‘BIRDS OF A FEATHER’, ‘WILDFLOWER’, ‘THE DINER’, ‘BLUE’

Worst track: ‘BITTERSUITE’

Rating: 9/10

The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess — Chappell Roan

Am I the only goddamn person on this Earth who remembers that this album came out in the Year of our Lorde 2023? This isn’t a complaint against the Grammys — their very stupid eligibility period, which spans from 16 September 2023 to 30 August 2024, manages to just barely include Midwest Princess, but they’ve had that stupid period for forever — it is a complaint against you, the reader.

I distinctly remember the first time that I listened to The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. It was on the 5th of October in 2023, on an empty train to Hurstbridge. I was almost immediately turned off by how extra ‘Femininomenon’⁵ was, but was immediately invested when ‘Red Wine Supernova’ began with “she put her canine teeth in the side of my neck”.

Anyway, my point is that I was blasting this all throughout late 2023, to the point I even got a crop top made with “HOT, NOT PRETTY” on it because I thought that would be cool. And then all you fucking troglodytes got into her the moment I was honestly kind of done with her.

Not to say that I was sick of Chappell Roan. I’ll never be sick of Chappell Roan. I’m so glad this album blew up. But goddamn it, this is the soundtrack of spring 2023 to me and nothing else.

Anyway. That outburst aside, I really like The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in case you hadn’t noticed. It’s perfect in an honestly kind of boring way — songs like ‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’ and ‘HOT TO GO!’ are just kind of perfect pop songs. They’re maximalist and fun and I’ve never not been happy to hear them.

The whole album radiates a sort of newly out gay joy, which is probably why I, a jaded terminally single lesbian, preferred HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, but I’m never not happy to hear this album, and there’s honestly not a track on here I would truly consider bad. And also it’s super cool that an album explicitly, unabashedly about lesbian love is this big and is nominated for Album of the Year!⁶

Even if it is from 2023, Midwest Princess is one of the most stunning debuts I’ve heard in a long time, it’s packed front-to-back with hits, and I’m so glad that it got its moment in the spotlight.

Best tracks: ‘Red Wine Supernova’, ‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’, ‘Guilty Pleasure’

Worst track (if I really have to choose): ‘Kaleidoscope’

Rating: 8/10

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT — Taylor Swift

I said earlier that Jacob Collier was the one artist I could get away with blatantly disrespecting. THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is probably the one album I could get away with blatantly disrespecting. I have already expended far too many words and thoughts on TTPD discourse, so I will assume the reader is familiar. But, in short, it’s imperial Taylor Swift, operating in damn near autopilot. You already know the lyrics that did the rounds on Twitter. So 10 months on, what do I think of it?

Well, it’s easily my most streamed album of 2024⁷ but also an album I rarely listen to in full. I’d say that it’s easily Taylor Swift’s worst and honestly kind of unlistenable front-to-back.

I wasn’t really expecting to think this — a lot of the tracks I thought were dreary trash I’ve grown to like and appreciate on their own, such as ‘My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys’ and ‘Fresh Out The Slammer’. And maybe the fact that this is the eighth album I’ve listened to today plays into it. But God, the vibe is oppressively bland.

I like ‘Fortnight’ featuring Post Malone, and I think it’s honestly underrated by virtue of being a Taylor Swift song called ‘Fortnight’ that features Post Malone. The harmonies on the bridge are really beautiful. ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’ is still fun. ‘Clara Bow’ is still a sweet little closer. But the rest of it mainly just fucking blends together because Taylor Swift refuses to even slightly leave the musical comfort zone she found herself in.

Yes, you could say the same for Midnights. But Midnights is interesting — and crucially, shorter. The individual songs on there stand out more as a result, and I don’t just notice when she’s going for wild sonic swings or super-confessional songwriting. It ebbs and it flows, it rises and it falls — it, dare I say, hits you hard and soft. It does those things an album is supposed to do.

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT doesn’t do that. It sits in its one consistent mood for more or less the entire record, it doesn’t stand out, and it’s no fun at all. I will stand up for this record, it has some gems, and I don’t think it’s some screamingly bad horrendous trainwreck or whatever. But it just isn’t very good. I don’t like it.

Best tracks: ‘Fortnight’, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, ‘Florida!!!’, ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’

Worst tracks: ‘Down Bad’, ‘But Daddy I Love Him’, ‘loml’, ‘The Alchemy’

Rating: 4/10

So, to conclude, who I do I want to win Album of the Year? I think either HIT ME HARD AND SOFT or The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess would be atypically amazing picks for the Grammys. My heart belongs to Billie, as previously discussed, but I’d be thrilled if Chappell won it.

I honestly am not certain who I think will win Album of the Year. A lot of people seem to think COWBOY CARTER, on the basis of “come the fuck on you guys need to give Beyoncé this fucking award already”, or THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, on account of the Grammys being the worst, but I actually think neither.

The Beyoncé record is a bit — well, I wouldn’t be surprised, but it doesn’t scream “coronated for AOTY” as it should. Yes, it’s a country album, but I feel like its time kind of came and went. And Taylor? Give me a minute.

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is not, I don’t think, Billie Eilish’s most accessible record, but you have to consider that the Grammys fucking love giving Billie Eilish awards. They gave her like every award in 2019. She won Record of the Year for a song about how she feels like no-one would care if she died, and Song of the Year about how fame is hollow and empty.

I will never bet against Billie Eilish being given more awards by the Grammys, despite how little she cares for or even wants them. So HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is my pick for who I think wins AOTY.

As for the pick that would be the most chaotic for the culture, I honestly don’t think anyone would really care if André 3000 got it. Maybe Jacob Collier gets some viral hate tweets but, really, who cares about Jacob Collier getting another fucking Grammy?⁸

No, what would be the most destructive and evil thing for the culture is Taylor fucking Swift getting the Grammy. I am praying for her sake and my own that THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT does not get the damn Album of the Year Grammy.

The contrarian side of me almost wants to root for it, just to prove everyone who cited “touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” as proof that real songwriting is dead conclusively wrong, but I am not that stupid. This would create the world’s worst discourse and I, quite frankly, cannot be bothered, so here’s me pre-banking my takes in case the Academy decides to be the worst.

• THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is not a good album.

• Taylor Swift is a good songwriter, even if she can occasionally be really frustrating.

• If you think Taylor Swift has never made an interesting song in her life, I politely disagree with your narrative.

• I wish Taylor Swift would honestly try something new musically. Anything.

• Jack Antonoff is a good producer and it is not really his fault this album lowkey sucks.

• There were much, much better albums the Academy could have chosen to award.

• THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT is not that bad.

God help us all.

1. On ‘SWEET ★ HONEY ★ BUCKIIN’.

2. I stole this joke from a tweet by @highluronicacid. His account is currently privated, so this link shouldn’t work, but here’s a link to that tweet anyway.

3. This blog will not be addressing Kamala Harris at this moment.

4. ‘Nuclear Seasons’ rules!

5. I still can’t fucking spell that.

6. Yes, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is also lesbian. I guarantee you half of the Academy’s voters did not notice. These are not serious people.

7. It had way more than the runner-up, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, if you include the 15 bonus Anthology tracks — 2573 streams — but taking those out it’s a marginally more respectable 1467 streams. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, for comparison, had 1079 streams.

8. I have nowhere else to put this but in-between listening to albums for this post, I heard someone refer to the late Quincy Jones — Collier’s mentor — as “Grammy whore Quincy Jones” — and I have nowhere else to put this in the post so it’s going here.