Confessions of a Former Grammy Voter

I became a Grammy voter in 2001. That was the year the Album of the Year award went to Steely Dan over Eminem (as well as Beck, Radiohead, and Paul Simon). In the intervening years, Two Against Nature has hardly revealed itself as a Tusk-like overlooked classic, but even then that choice was fairly interpreted as a lifetime achievement award and a decision not to deal with the cognitive dissonance prompted by our biggest true rock star of the moment.

The Record of the Year in 2001 was “Beautiful Day” by U2, a return to form for a beloved act that was chosen over another return to form (Madonna’s “Music”), the biggest pop culture hit of the year (’N Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye”), and the year’s artist breakthrough story (“Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child). Destiny’s Child wasn’t a Best New Artist nominee either. That award went to Shelby Lynne. The only R&B nominee in the category was Sisqo.

Compared to the Steely Dan award, “Beautiful Day” was a predictable but not embarrassing ROTY choice–a record that sounds great and still endures to some extent. The one that really rankled for me came in 2002 when U2’s “Walk On” — never even really a single — beat “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast, and the safer but more-relevant “Fallin’” by Alicia Keys and “Drops of Jupiter” by Train, all three songs that remain far more enduring decades later.

My voting membership in the Grammys expired this year. I expected to have it end sooner but in 2020 when I got the first notification that my credentials — based mostly on having written liner notes for oldies compilations many years ago — would have to be reviewed, I called membership services as directed and was surprisingly offered the chance to renew for five years with no questions asked.

My personal taste in music has always been oddball — a more eclectic and unself-conscious version of the mainstream. There’s been more of that critically championed since 2001, although I’m kinda indifferent to Charli XCX too. (If I had to choose my personal favorite new single of 2025 today, it would probably be this Australian hit. The most significant hit of the year is “Pink Pony Club” a 2020/2023 song that encountered and met its moment in every way this year, but wasn’t submitted in favor of “The Subway,” the less impactful 2025 release.) 

For years, having tastes that were quirky but not hip left me in the middle as a voter. I saw my own judgment landing in a place between the increasingly obscure music that the nominators chose and what voters actually picked. I often felt that my own vote dissolved harmlessly in the ether.

I did feel that the Grammys had some responsibility to represent a place where quality music was ratified by the public. In 2018, “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran, one of the biggest and most enduring hits of that half of the decade, was snubbed for “The Ballad of OJ” by Jay-Z. I saw that as a worst-of-both-worlds decision — self-consciously hip, but just as out of time in its own way as “Walk On” in 2002. I’m over 60 now, and I understand if you’re happy to see me stop voting. But the 41-year-olds had their own blinders, I thought.

By the late ’10s/early ’20s, the Grammy nominations looked more like a music writers’ poll, even though the industry professionals who voted would have rankled at the suggestion that theirs was not a more inside perspective. To look back at 2019 ROTY nominee Bon Iver’s “Hey Ma” or song of the year candidate Lana Del Rey’s “Norman F***ing Rockwell” is to see the Steely Dan phenomenon having sped up—non-hits by acts that were still hipper a few years earlier.

For the next few years, even as NARAS CEO Harvey Mason worked admirably to broaden the voting base, the nominees and winners became what Billboard’s Robert Levine accurately described in 2022 as “Grammycore” — more admirably diverse, but still unexciting, particularly  if the goal was a better representation of Hip-Hop’s place in popular music. Every now and then, there would also be a true Steely Dan nod to a veteran act, like Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That,” a song I liked but could have hardly imagined as 2023’s Song of the Year.

One change I’d like to see would be to limit the label and artist decisions to participate or not, or to decide which song on an album to submit for consideration. As a voter going through the initial nominations, I didn’t like having my choices limited. I certainly would have voted on the first ballot for “Pink Pony Club.” Sometimes the labels and artists get it wrong, too.

As the nominees got more obscure in the late ‘10s, I also thought the Grammys should create at least a few separate categories for acclaimed music in the major categories that had less commercial impact. Nine nominees in the major categories were a lot; why not have two sets of five that represented meaningfully different things?

Grammy choices have always been easy to second-guess. As it happens, I agree more with the choices this year than with any set of Grammy nominations in recent memory — more mainstream, less willfully obscure, good representation of Hip-Hop. In 2025, every ROTY choice had at least some radio footprint (in part because Doechii and Kendrick Lamar gave Hip-Hop a better pop-radio presence, despite rap’s issues on the Hot 100). More aligned with radio may not seem like a good thing to everybody; I prefer it over the last five years.

Not being a voter this year also allows me to do something else for the first time — share my picks. Not having heard every album nominee in its entirety yet — an admission to some, I realize, that I am no longer a useful voter — here are my choices in the other Big 3 categories.

• Record of the Year – “Luther” by Kendrick Lamar & SZA. A moment of relative grace that the world needed and a nice companion to “Not Like Us.” I hope they find a place in the performance for Cheryl Lynn, acknowledged neither in the song credits or in the titular shoutout, but as much a part of the sampled “If This World Were Mine” as Luther Vandross.
• Song of the Year – “Golden.” If it had been nominated as Record of the Year, I might vote the inverse and go with “Luther” here instead. The success of Kpop Demon Hunters makes it more than just a song. Also, in a field dominated by samples and throwbacks, the motivational movie song becomes somehow more forward-looking.
• New Artist – Sombr. There are great moments acknowledged in the nominations for both Lola Young and Leon Thomas. There is a crowd-pleasing choice in Olivia Dean, who has made the year’s “after-dinner” album, often the thing that is acknowledged by the Grammys. Between Alex Warren, Addison Rae, the Donnas, and Sombr, streaming plays heavily into the New Artist nominees this year. Sombr was the one with a surprisingly versatile set of hits, and the one whose streaming hits were also great radio records.

Your choices and comments are welcome.