Why is the Grammys’ best new artist award never really given to a new artist?
The nominees for the 2025 Grammy award for best new artist have released dozens of albums between them, and numerous hits
When is something old considered new? If you’re talking about the Grammy Awards, that’s often whoever lands in the best new artist category, easily the weirdest of the races.
Take Sabrina Carpenter, who finds herself nominated for best new artist this year – on her sixth full-length release. There’s little doubt that the “Espresso” singer ruled the airwaves in 2024, but she was already making a mark on the Billboard Hot 100 chart as early as 2021 with the No 48 song “Skin”.
The category of new artist is constantly evolving, trying to capture the zeitgeist each year as the process of categorising fame gets more complicated, from LP sales in the 1970s to TikTok videos today.
“I do think that they are constantly tweaking that category to make a bigger splash with it,” says Theo Cateforis, director of undergraduate studies in music history at Syracuse University, in New York.
“They are kind of gaming the system to say, ‘Yes, we want artists nominated for this category who will draw eyeballs, who will have an audience, who will make for a better kind of media representation’.”