Nov. 15, 2022, the 65th Grammy Awards nominees were announced. Although there are still several months until the show, there have been various reactions to the nominees. There are over 90 categories for the Grammys, ranging from Best Bluegrass Album to Best Opera Performance. The categories open to all genres include Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. These are also known as “the big four”. I will be predicting the winners of each big four category as well as other important pop categories. 

To start, the biggest category is Album of the Year. According to grammy.com, this award is given to the artists, featured artists, and any producers or writers that had a part in creating the album. The albums that stand out to me are RENAISSANCE by Beyonce, “Harry’s House” by Harry Styles, and “Music of Spheres” by Coldplay. This year, however, artist Bad Bunny makes history by being the first Spanish-language album to earn a nomination for Album of the Year with his album Un Verano Sin Ti. In past years, this category has always been hard to predict. My prediction is going to Bad Bunny with Un Verano Sin Ti. This album was also named the #1 of the year by TIME Magazine. 

The next award is Record of the Year. This is awarded to the artist, producers, recording engineers, mixers, and mastering engineers if included in the album. Although there are many popular songs like “About Damn Time” by Lizzo and “Easy on Me” by Adele, the one release that really stood out to me was “BREAK MY SOUL” by Beyonce. Beyonce’s single is my prediction because of the bold stylistic choices the production team made with it. No one expected the house and EDM direction the song went in, and it was a perfect leading single to her album.

Now is the time to highlight the difference between Record of the Year and Song of the Year. While awarding records focuses on the production and sound of the song, Song of the Year awards are based on the artist’s songwriting. Therefore, this is given to the artists and or songwriters. By far, the best songwriting on this list is Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”, but I don’t think the length of the song will work in favor of this award. For this reason, I predict Song of the Year to go to “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy. Steve Lacy benefits from Tik Tok’s algorithm which heavily promoted this single. 

One of the most relevant pop awards is Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. This Grammy is awarded to groups or collaborations between two artists. Although there were many collaborations released in the past year, there were not many that stuck out to me in this category. “My Universe” by Coldplay and BTS is my prediction for this award simply because of the global impact of both Coldplay and BTS. This is BTS’ fifth Grammy nomination and Coldplay’s 31st. 

The final award I will predict is Pop Vocal Album. This award is packed with popular albums like Adele’s “30” as well as ABBA’s “Voyager.” In the end, this award will go to “Harry’s House” by Harry Styles. Not only did his pre-release single “As It Was” impact the charts, but his single “Late Night Talking” also ran the radio stations for quite some time over the summer. 

Overall, the Grammy nominations are always unpredictable. The winners will be announced Feb. 5, 2023.