For over half a century, the Grammys have been marked as the pinnacle of musical achievement. Yet, with praise of the award show also comes a fair bit of controversy. Wins like Killer Mike’s “Michael” over Travis Scott’s “Utopia” for Best Rap Album, Eric Clapton beating Nirvana for Best Rock Song, and Adele’s “25” beating Beyonce’s “Lemonade” have made people question the validity of the awards. Let’s go through five winners and losers of this year’s Grammys, see if the Recording Academy really did get it right this year, and who profited off their decisions.
Winner – Bad Bunny
Going into this year’s awards, it seemed as if Bad Bunny was destined to be this year’s big winner. His sixth studio album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” was a revelation, crowning itself as his magnum opus, but also becoming some sort of cultural phenomenon. The project is a love letter to his home of Puerto Rico, which has embraced the project to its fullest. Pinned up against the likes of Lady Gaga’s “Mayhem” and Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX”, the Recording Academy picked “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS”, making it the first Spanish-speaking Album of the Year winner. In addition to Album of the Year, Bad Bunny also won Best Musicá Urbana Album and Best Global Music Performance. This comes a week before he is set to perform for the Super Bowl halftime show, crowning Bad Bunny as the ultimate winner of the Grammys.
Loser – Alex Warren
This year’s Best New Artist category contained quite a few names associated with mediocre TikTok music, and Alex Warren is no exception. Apart from losing the award to Olivia Dean, Warren’s biggest loss came from his performance during the medley of all the nominated musicians for Best New Artist. Appearing to have had his earpiece fall out, his entire performance felt like he was racing to catch up to the lyrics. Along with that, the performance didn’t feel like it belonged at the Grammys, but more so like a performance straight out of a mega church with a rising platform and his dramatic vocals. His performance was a juxtaposition to what is a relatively slow, soulless track, but also what felt like a less energetic Benson Boone performance. Overall, it was a rough night for Alex Warren with both an unfortunate mishap during his performance and a loss in the singular category he was nominated for.
Winner – Kendrick Lamar
It is no secret that the Recording Academy loves Kendrick Lamar. After this year, his Grammy win count is now at 27, with five of those coming from this year’s installment. Lamar picked up wins in the Record of the Year and Best Rap Album categories, among others. In perhaps the most memorable moment of the night, Cher awarded Record of the Year to the late Luther Vandross, instead of Lamar’s “luther” with SZA (which samples the soul icon), which has since gone viral on social media for its obscurity. Along with the win for “luther”, Lamar also won Best Rap Song for “tv off”, which was relatively unsurprising due to the prominence of the song on social media in the past year. Another thing that caught the eye of social media was Lamar’s hand being wrapped in bandages, which is theorized to be signaling a new persona he is about to take on in a potential new project. If a new project does release within the coming months, it seems like we could see Kendrick be a big winner in back-to-back-to-back Grammys next year.
Loser – Tyler, the Creator
This one comes with a grain of salt because, even if he is being labeled a loser, Tyler didn’t exactly do anything to deserve this label. The label of being one of the night’s “losers” comes at the hands of the Recording Academy, since he lost all three music-centered awards he was nominated for, with his only win coming for Best Album Cover (which felt the least deserving of all his nominations). He lost awards for Album of the Year, Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song, losing out to Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar, respectively. However, unlike the other “loser” Alex Warren, Tyler did put on one of the best performances of the entire night. His performances of “Thought I Was Dead” and “Sugar On My Tongue” were, like Kendrick Lamar’s bandaged hand, the destruction of two of Tyler’s current personas (hence why he was blown up at the end). So while he did light up the stage, it’s hard not to be disappointed with the silverware Tyler left with on Sunday night.
Winner – Turnstile
The Baltimore-based Turnstile saw a couple of nominations head their way after the release of “Glow On”, but it seems their newest album, “Never Enough”, is what people will remember them for. The project earned the band five nominations, winning two and marking the band as the big winners of the rock category. Their win for Best Metal Performance for the track “Birds” marked the band’s first Grammy win, before the album took on another win for Best Rock Album. The wins come off the back of a very successful world tour that took up the latter half of 2025 as well as this January. Finally finished with their tour, it will definitely be interesting to see what direction Turnstile takes with their next project, but for now, fans will have to sit with the now Grammy-winning “Never Enough”.