The nominees for the 2025 Grammy Award for Album of the Year have been announced. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter will compete against the latest from fellow Recording Academy veterans—Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poet’s Department—and category newcomers Charli XCX (nominated for Brat), Sabrina Carpenter (Short n’ Sweet), and Chappell Roan (The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess). Jacob Collier’s Djesse Vol. 4 is also in the running, as is Outkast musician André 3000’s solo debut, the cosmic jazz woodwind record New Blue Sun.
With her seventh nod in the category, Swift is now the female artist with the most Album of the Year nominations, breaking her previous tie with Barbara Streisand. Swift is already the winningest primary artist in the category’s history.
Beyoncé, despite being the winningest artist in all of Grammys history, is still searching for her first Album of the Year victory. She most recently lost the category to Harry Styles, in 2023, after being nominated for Renaissance.
Charli XCX came into the day with two career Grammy nominations and no victories. Like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, she is seeking to become a first-time winner.
All three of Billie Eilish’s studio albums have now been nominated for Album of the Year, but she’s won the category only for her debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? That year, 2020, Eilish swept the big four categories.
André 3000 won two Grammy Awards earlier this year—for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance, for his work with Killer Mike on “Scientists & Engineers”—and he’s now been nominated five times for Album of the Year. He won the category in 2004 for the Outkast album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.
The 2025 Grammy Awards are set to air live, on Sunday, February 2, 2025, from Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena. Follow along with all of Pitchfork’s coverage of the 2025 Grammy Awards, and revisit “Who Should Be Nominated at the 2025 Grammy Awards” on the Pitch.
Album of the Year
André 3000 – New Blue Sun
Beyoncé – Cowboy Carter
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft
Chappell Roan – The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess
Charli XCX – Brat
Jacob Collier – Djesse Vol. 4
Sabrina Carpenter – Short n’ Sweet
Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department
