There is something exciting about the best new artist award at the Grammys. It is, by its nature, celebrating the fresh and, sometimes, the novel. Some of the nominees are sweetly green, while others have toiled for years without piercing the mainstream. All seem thrilled to be nominated.
The award can be a kind of musical crystal ball, a hint at musicians who will come to flourish in the industry. (Past winners include Sade, Alicia Keys and Adele.) And it is also a way for audiences to discover newer artists, like the jazz singer Samara Joy, whose 2023 win gave her career a boost.
Each nominee tells us a story — about the past year in music and the direction of music more generally. So, here are three things to know about the category ahead of the ceremony tonight.
When, in years to come, people are asked about pop music in the 2020s, the names Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are likely to come to mind. So rapid was Roan’s rise that the venues her team booked the year before her tour could not accommodate her fans. And so ubiquitous was Sabrina Carpenter’s criminally catchy “Espresso” that it prompted conspiracy theories about the Spotify algorithm.
Their successes were a long time coming: Carpenter, a former Disney child star, released her sixth album last year. And Atlantic Records first signed Roan, 26, when she was just 17. There are many such cases in the best new artist category. At least three other nominees — the British singer Raye, the country artist Shaboozey and the band Khruangbin — have been releasing music for a decade or more. A “breakthrough in public consciousness,” as the Recording Academy puts it in the eligibility requirements, appears to have little to do with how long someone has been making music.
At the start of last year, Carpenter and Roan were members of what Shaad D’Souza described in The Times as pop music’s middle class: Artists beloved in some corners of the internet but for whom commercial success remained elusive. No longer. “Espresso” was the most streamed song in the world on Spotify last year, and their cultural impact ran deep enough to warrant each her own “Saturday Night Live” parody. (They’re nominated for six Grammys each.)
Star ascendant
Another one of the nominees, Doechii, a 26-year-old rapper and singer from Florida, may very well experience a similar ascendancy in 2025. “The year ahead for her is going to be huge,” my colleague Lindsay Zoladz, a music critic, told me. That’s great news for her career, though maybe not so good for her chances of winning the Grammy, considering that Roan and Carpenter are the favorites.
It’s easy to see why audiences are drawn to her. Last year, Doechii released her (very good) mixtape “Alligator Bites Never Heal,” which is by turns buttery, grimy, vulnerable and self-possessed. Fans have emulated her distinctive “Swamp Princess” aesthetic. Millions have watched and shared her theatrical performances on NPR’s Tiny Desk and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” And Kendrick Lamar praised her as “the hardest out.” Her path to fame — she parlayed a viral TikTok song into critically lauded success — is a model for the modern music business. Doechii announced that she would release an album sometime this year, telling Variety: “I’m just looking forward to making more hits.”
A wider tent
The nomination of Shaboozey, the Nigerian American country-singer-slash-rapper, is, on one level, a straightforward recognition of the success of his song “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which spent a record 19 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 list. But it’s also symbolic of a year in which country music continued to cross into the mainstream and encompass different kinds of artists.
The Times critic Jon Pareles wrote that 2024 was “a year in which country culture has become palpably ubiquitous.” Post Malone took a country turn on “F-1 Trillion,” and Beyoncé tapped country artists and influences for her album “Cowboy Carter.” The Beyoncé album cast a glow: She boosted streaming numbers for the Black country artists featured on her album, including Shaboozey, and raised the genre’s profile. “Beyoncé’s album helped — it was for the betterment of country music,” the country singer Ernest told The Times.
I didn’t mention all the nominees for best new artist (you can find them here), but the competition is stiff. “I think it’s an especially strong year for best new artist,” Lindsay told me. “There are five to six different nominees that in another year could have won.”
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In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is using a religious festival, considered the world’s largest gathering, as a platform to promote his political achievements and Hindu traditions.
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Hamas freed three hostages and Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners as part of a cease-fire deal. The exchange proceeded smoothly, unlike a previous one.
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The F.D.A. issued its most severe recall for some chocolate- and yogurt-covered products because of unlisted ingredients that could be deadly for people with allergies.
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The crash of a medical transport plane in Northeast Philadelphia that killed seven left a neighborhood shaken.
THE SUNDAY DEBATE
Should the Gulf of Mexico be called the Gulf of America?
No. The president has better things to spend energy on. “I mean, the Atlantic Ocean borders our nation’s entire East Coast, so why not change that to ‘East American Ocean?’” Florida Today’s John Torres writes.
Yes. Trump’s decision to change the name signals America comes first. “If he starts calling the body of water down by Florida and Texas ‘the Gulf of America’ and Republican politicians go along with it, it could stick,” The Arizona Republic’s Greg Moore writes.
FROM OPINION
American voters may have given Trump the power to push forward his agenda, but he must do so legally, the Editorial Board writes.
Throw away your smartphone, August Lamm writes.
Ross Douthat writes that Americans have a striking nostalgia for belief. He wants to help you pick a religion, if you’re looking.
Here’s a column by Nicholas Kristof on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old” by Brooke Shields, and “Dare I Say It?” by Naomi Watts: Like old friends who can’t be bothered with competition or pretense, these new best-sellers are best enjoyed together. In fact, Watts even makes a cameo in Shields’s convivial memoir of reaching a certain age and embracing the wisdom she’s earned. Both authors explore the same terrain — menopause, aging and the power that comes with experience. But Shields takes a first-person approach (letting it all hang out, in the best way), while Watts goes in a more prescriptive direction, weighing in (with the advice of experts) on sleep challenges, physical changes and other realities for women in midlife. Worth noting: Shields and Watts both have beauty brands geared toward their demographic, but their books are in no way promotional. And they share a similar message for sisters in arms: Hold your people close, especially the ones with a sense of humor.
More on Books
THE INTERVIEW
This week’s subject for The Interview is Dr. Anna Lembke, an addiction specialist at Stanford. Lembke, who wrote the best-selling book “Dopamine Nation,” works with patients dealing with all sorts of addictions, from opioids and alcohol to what she calls “digital drugs.” We spoke about what she’s seen in her practice, and life, over the past few years.
We’ve all become extremely attached to our phones. And phones do seem like the gateway to a lot of these new addictive behaviors. Online sports betting has exploded; pornography use, as you mentioned, is up even as actual sex is down. I was reading a study that said in 2024, Gen Z spent six to seven hours a day scrolling, on average. So I guess it seems that it’s more a systemic problem than an individual problem.
I agree 100 percent. This is a collective problem. I see it as part of the Anthropocene, which is a term that’s been coined to describe the age we live in now, when human action is changing the face of the planet for the first time in history. Climate change is often included in this idea of the Anthropocene. But I think that the stressors of overabundance should also be included in that. In the richest countries in the world, we have more leisure time, more disposable income, more access to leisure goods than ever before. And as a result, we are all struggling to know what to do with all that extra time and money. And one would hope and think that we would be engaging in deep philosophical discussions, helping each other—
Sorry, I’m laughing.
But instead what we’re doing is spending a whole lot of time masturbating, shopping and watching other people do things online. And essentially what’s happened is we’re spending more and more of our energy and creativity investing in this online world, which means that we are actually leaching our real-life existence of our energy and creativity. So when we try to re-enter the real world, it actually is more boring, because there’s less going on, because there’s nobody there.
In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein suggests making roasted tofu and green beans with chile crisp, a one-pan crispy chicken and chickpeas, and salmon with avocado and cilantro salad.