2025 Grammy Highlights

Earlier this month, music fans all around the country celebrated one of the biggest nights in music, The 67th Annual Grammy Awards. As a personal music fan and a member of Align’s Music Team, I felt obligated to reflect on the biggest night in music. Despite every Grammy Awards having its own exciting moments, this one in particular felt special. From groundbreaking performances, monumental Grammy wins, inspiring Grammy Award speeches, and awareness of Los Angeles wildfires. We’re pinpointing some of this year's Grammy Awards’ most prominent moments and examining how the idea of influencing the public with a platform became principally dominant. 

The 67th Annual Grammy Awards opened with a star-studded performance of “I Love L.A.” by Randy Newman — bringing awareness of the deeply impactful LA Wildfires, and tributing the song to the Grammys birthplace of Los Angeles. This performance included many Grammy Award-winning artists like John Legend, Brad Paisley, Sheryl Crow, Brittany Howard, and St Vincent. As well as lead singing by the incredible sibling indie-rock band Dawes. Throughout the performance, the big screen in the background of the stage showed pictures of the LA fire aftermath, with a big sign saying “We love L.A.” This performance was the perfect tribute, and a fantastic opening for a historical Grammy Awards that continues to focus on gaining donations and celebrating the city of L.A. Comedian and 5 time Grammy Award host, Trevor Noah, interrupts the Grammys broadcast throughout the whole show, encouraging viewers to donate to the wildfires, as well as shares stories of many of our own Grammy musicians’ aftermaths of the fires. 

There is no denying that 2024 was a huge year for pop artists — specifically pop girlies. The Grammys did not forget that. We saw incredible pop performances from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Elish, and of course a performance from the culturally phenomenal album Brat by Charli XCX. Chappell Roan performed “Pink Pony Club” as well, in a pink, upbeat, crowd-loving performance with a giant pink pony, because she can’t do anything less than ridiculously outstanding. She later, very deservingly, wins Best New Artist, saying in her speech “I told myself if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a liveable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists.” She then discusses in her speech her past hardships of joining the industry at such a young age and not being able to afford health insurance when she was dropped from her past label in 2020. Chappell uses her stage and platform to speak out against the unfortunately greedy and corrupt base of the American music industry in front of and directly to the industries at the biggest and most prominent night for music in the United States, something that I have personally never seen another artist do. Chappell is exactly what this industry needs as a new, young artist who’s not afraid to speak up about the corrupt industries that don’t care about the artists they profit off of, and doesn’t pretend like this issue isn’t happening. Following this speech, Chappell Roan launches a donation charity to struggling artists, and fellow pop princess Sabrina Carpenter matches her donations. 

I’m sure by now you’ve listened to the song “Not Like Us” at least a hundred times this past year. The Drake diss track by Kendrick Lamar was most definitely recognized for its success at the Grammys, sweeping Song of The Year, Record of The Year, Best Music Video, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Performance — making it the most nominated Grammy rap song in history. Lamar used his Grammy award speech to dedicate it to his hometown and a large theme of this year's Grammys, the city of Los Angeles. Lamar discusses briefly what it was like to grow up in LA, and says this award is a “huge testament that we can obtain to restore the city.” Lamar went on to perform one week later at the Super Bowl halftime show, giving a symbolic and powerful performance regarding the country’s current state, and “Not Like Us” was definitely performed in the set. 

Beyonce’s debut country album Cowboy Carter was recognized with eleven Grammy nominations, and three Grammys, making her the most Grammy-nominated artist of all time with 99 Grammy nominations throughout her career. Best Country Album was one of her wins this year, as Beyonce was announced on stage as the first black artist to ever win a country album. She already has the most Grammys out of any artist and is now only continuing to make history. Beyonce continued to win big throughout the night — winning Best Country Duo/ Group Performance for “II MOST WANTED” with Miley Cyrus and, the biggest win of all, Album of The Year. Beyonce’s Album of the Year win beat out several very popular albums, including Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Charli XCX’s Brat, and Billie Elish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. Despite Beyonce being an incredibly popular Grammy award-winning artist, her Album of The Year win created a lot of criticism and backlash due to people believing other artists deserved it more. 

The Grammys ended with a special dedication to the LA fire department, bringing them all out on stage to give them a standing ovation for their extremely difficult and heroic work in these recent LA fires. The fire department chief made a special speech to thank the Recording Academy and especially all first responders who did their part in fighting the wildfires. The fire department chief continues his speech, giving remembrance to the homes, businesses, towns, and especially lives lost in these recent events. That ends a very eventful night of music, performances, awards, influential moments, and raising money and awareness for LA fire relief. I recently found out that throughout the night of the Grammys telecast, the Recording Academy raised 9 million dollars just that night in fire relief from viewers of the telecast. Another exciting Grammy Awards in the books, but this year, an especially influential one.