Dear listeners,
Each year, just before the Grammys, I like to create a playlist that introduces listeners to the nominees for best new artist. And since this year’s ceremony is on Sunday, it’s time.
If you’ve been paying attention to popular music at all in the past year or so, quite a few of these names need no introduction. Sabrina Carpenter scored not one but three massive hits last year, all of them animated by her perky, quirky charisma. Shaboozey’s downcast foot-stomper “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was so ubiquitous, it tied the record for most weeks spent atop the Billboard Hot 100 (19 — that’s over a third of a year!). The soulful vocalists Teddy Swims and Benson Boone both had breakout hits that propelled them into the mainstream (“Lose Control” and “Beautiful Things”).
In a different kind of year, any of those artists could have easily been the front-runner for the best new artist trophy. But in this contest, they’re going up against the red-hot, pop-cultural supernova that is Chappell Roan. As she says: Good luck, babe!
My prediction is that Roan will take this award (fulfilling a dream she manifested onstage when she won a local talent show in 2012), and deliver one of the night’s most memorable performances. But the Grammys love to keep things a little spicy, so who knows? If there’s an upset, at least you won’t be caught off guard by the winner — because you’ll have listened to this playlist.
So we’re gonna try a breathing exercise, OK?
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. Chappell Roan: “Good Luck, Babe!”
Although 2024 was undoubtedly Chappell Roan’s breakout year, this anthemic kiss-off was the only single she released that year. Her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” came out on Sept. 22, 2023 (just six days after the Grammy eligibility window opened!), but became a sleeper hit, building a cult audience that eventually turned into something much larger. Roan’s tales of queer longing are cut through with an audacious self-confidence, melding a knack for old-fashioned songcraft with a drag-influenced sense of humor and spectacle.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Sabrina Carpenter: “Please Please Please”
Like her other two 2024 smashes, “Espresso” and “Taste,” the infectious “Please Please Please” is full of the sorts of idiosyncratic sonic details and cheeky turns of phrase that set Sabrina Carpenter apart from her peers. Behold her facility with a beautifully sung punchline — and a hilariously enunciated expletive.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Teddy Swims: “Lose Control”
Like Roan’s “Midwest Princess,” the 32-year-old soul singer Teddy Swims’s breakout hit “Lose Control” was a 2023 release that got off to a slow start but gradually picked up steam, and eventually topped the charts in 2024. And also like Roan, Swims — whose real name is the slightly less marquee-friendly Jaten Dimsdale — goes by a sobriquet in order to separate his onstage persona from his real-life identity: “Swims” is an acronym for “someone who isn’t me sometimes.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Doechii: “Denial Is a River”
Whether or not she takes home a Grammy on Sunday, the dexterous Florida rapper Doechii is undoubtedly a star in the making, as this current single — structured like a raw but comedic conversation between Doechii and her therapist alter ego — demonstrates. I’d love to see her pull off an upset in the best rap album category, where her imaginative mixtape “Alligator Bites Never Heal” is nominated alongside efforts from veterans like Eminem, Common and J. Cole.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Khruangbin: “May Ninth”
The diffuse, groovy sound of the Texas trio Khruangbin is difficult to pin down, but I like the options that the writer Ryan Bradley offered in a New York Times Magazine profile from last year: “Is it psychedelic lounge dub? Desert surf rock? The sound you hear inside a lava lamp?” Let’s go with the last one. Like quite a few of this year’s nominees (Carpenter is on her sixth album; Shaboozey on his third), Khruangbin is only a “new artist” by the Grammys’ notoriously nebulous standards: The band formed in 2010 and its most recent album, the drifting, spacious “A La Sala,” is its fourth. But either way, Khruangbin is a fun, low-key wild-card in a category full of aspiring A-listers — and the only band nominated in a year that is heavy on solo acts.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Benson Boone: “Beautiful Things”
An “American Idol” dropout with a penchant for onstage back flips and the most intriguing Gen Z mustache this side of Timothée Chalamet, the 22-year-old Benson Boone blends pop crooner romanticism with rock star bombast on this dynamic hit, which blew up on TikTok and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 last year.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Raye featuring 070 Shake: “Escapism.”
The London-born singer-songwriter Raye is no stranger to awards-show triumph: Last year, when she scored six Brit Awards, she broke the record for most wins in a single ceremony. That was largely thanks to her ambitious 2023 debut album, “My 21st Century Blues,” which drew inspiration from Amy Winehouse and Beyoncé and found Raye singing about contemporary hot-button issues like body image, climate change and, as she does on this harrowing hit, struggles with self-esteem and substance use.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Shaboozey: “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
Finally, let’s go out with a tune you’ve probably heard before — albeit from an artist you probably hadn’t heard of before last year. Though the 29-year-old, Virginia-born singer-songwriter has been releasing music as Shaboozey for about a decade now, he made the most of his memorable guest appearances on Beyoncé’s 2024 epic “Cowboy Carter” and, just two weeks later, put out this star-making single, which transforms J-Kwon’s ecstatic 2004 party anthem “Tipsy” into a hard-luck country tune. Might a big night for “Cowboy Carter” also mean an upset win for Shaboozey? We’ll see on Sunday.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“Meet the Grammys’ 2025 Best New Artist Nominees” track list
Track 1: Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!”
Track 2: Sabrina Carpenter, “Please Please Please”
Track 3: Teddy Swims, “Lose Control”
Track 4: Doechii, “Denial Is a River”
Track 5: Khruangbin, “May Ninth”
Track 6: Benson Boone, “Beautiful Things”
Track 7: Raye featuring 070 Shake, “Escapism.”
Track 8: Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
Bonus Tracks
If Beyoncé does indeed win her first (and long-deserved) album of the year, she would be only the fourth Black woman in Grammy history to take home the trophy. In a sharp piece, the esteemed critic Daphne A. Brooks puts that in context.
Billie Eilish also has a shot at that same award for her third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” Joe Coscarelli spoke with Eilish and her brother, Finneas, about what inspired them, for this dazzlingly fun interactive piece.
And on this week’s Friday Playlist, Jon Pareles highlights new tracks from the Weeknd, Sleigh Bells, Lucrecia Dalt and more. Listen here.
The post Meet the Grammys’ Best New Artist Nominees appeared first on New York Times.
