State Champ Radio Pop
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Beyoncé notched a number of firsts on Sunday night (Feb. 2) at the 2025 Grammy Awards. Not only did she become the first Black woman to take home the album of the year award as the lead artist this century when Cowboy Carter took the top prize, but she also finally scored her long-sought first win in the AOTY category after four previous nominations and losses.
Asked what the award means to her by ET after the show, Beyoncé said, “It’s very surreal and it’s been 25 years of working really had and trying me best to keep growing and keep opening up doors… so I’m just very honored.” In accepting the award, Bey shouted out the members of the Los Angeles Fire Department who presented it to her, thanking them for keeping Angelenos safe during the recent deadly wildfires that were acknowledged frequently during Sunday’s fundraising broadcast.
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“I’d like to thank and acknowledge and praise all of the firefighters for keeping us safe,” she said during the show. “I just feel very full and very honored. It’s been many, many years.”
A reporter for the Recording Academy also caught up with the singer backstage and got a similarly jubilant answer. “I feel overwhelmed, so full, thank you so much. This is a beautiful night,” she said, adding with some sass and a wrist roll, “the Beyhive is buzzin‘!”
In her chat with ET, Bey also said she was glad that her and Jay-Z’s eldest daughter, Blue Ivy, was on hand to see her mom triumph and join her on stage for the big moment. “Taller than me, and I don’t like it at all,” the singer joked about the 13-year-old, noting that their youngest daughter, four-year-old Rumi — who is also on Cowboy Carter — was “at home watching and I forgot to thank her so I get to thank her now: Thank you, Rumi.”
Beyoncé also took time to acknowledge that the Carter album was a means to introduce many more people to the deep history of Black country artists while showcasing such contemporary players as Rhiannon Giddens, whose hot banjo licks on the “Texas Hold ‘Em” single likely put a lot more eyes on her long career in country/bluegrass music.
“The banjo has a deep history and I just feel honored to reintroduce some of that history that I think has been lost and very, very honored that I got the response and the open heart and that people welcomed the album,” Beyoncé said, appearing to get a little teary-eyed when the interviewer mentioned how touched Giddens said she was in an chat last year about her prominent spot on the album.
“The love I got from the country community tonight really made me feel so seen and I’m very grateful,” Beyoncé said. “Hopefully they continue to open up the world for people that just love and respect the genre, no matter where they come from, everybody should be invited.”
In addition to AOTY, the 11-times nominated Cowboy Carter also won best country album, making Bey the first Black woman to ever take home the prize; she also won best country duo/group performance thanks to her Miley Cyrus team-up on “II Most Wanted.”
Watch Beyoncé talk AOTY Grammy win below.
It’s OK to just admit that you’re jealous of Charli XCX — she did just close out the 2025 Grammys with the final performance of the night, after all. Performing a medley of two of the most beloved tracks on her album Brat, the star kicked things off outdoors in the Crypto.com Arena driveway, popping […]
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars added to their trophy collection at the 2025 Grammy Awards Sunday (Feb. 2) when they won best pop duo/group performance for their Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping song “Die With a Smile.” Gaga and Mars shared the stage and rejoiced after winning over Beyonce and Post Malone, Gracie Abrams and Taylor […]
Just a short while after assisting Bruno Mars in a tribute to Los Angeles with a solemn “California Dreamin’” cover, Lady Gaga revealed her bombastic new dance-pop single, “Abracadabra.” Unveiled through a MasterCard commercial, Gaga treated her high-octane new single to an artsy music video that trades primarily in red, black and white hues. “The […]
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars threw it back to the ’60s for their performance at the 2025 Grammys, singing The Mamas and the Papas’ iconic hit “California Dreamin” midway through the ceremony at Crypto.com Arena Sunday (Feb. 2). Taking the stage just after a video played highlighting the destruction in the Los Angeles area — […]
Chappell Roan has never been one to shy away from making a point, and she made sure to make her voice heard at the 2025 Grammys Sunday (Feb. 2) when she won best new artist at the annual ceremony.
After she was announced as the category’s winner, Roan — who was dressed in a conical princess hat and a satin gray dress — took to the stage at the Crypto.com Arena and immediately offered a series of shout-outs. “Thank you to my fellow nominees, whose music got me through this past year — Brat was the best night of my life this year,” she said with a laugh. “Thank you all who listened to get me here today, and Dan, and Island Records, Amusement Records, my friends and my family, and above all my papa Chappell, who I named myself after.”
Then, the “Pink Pony Club” singer steered her speech to ask the music labels watching to provide better healthcare and financial support for their artists. “I told myself if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially for developing artists,” she said, reading out of a notebook.
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Roan shared her own experience with being dropped from a major label, and how the lack of support she received affected her. “I got signed so young … and when I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt, and like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic, and could not afford health insurance,” she said. “It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and to feel so betrayed by the system and to be so dehumanized to not have healthcare. If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to.”
In closing her speech, Roan left executives with a powerful note: “Labels, we got you — but do you got us?”
Roan was nominated in a stacked best new artist category, featuring stars including Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, Doechii, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims and others. The “Femininomenon” singer also received five other nominations at the annual awards show, including in the other Big Four categories for album of the year (The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess), record of the year and song of the year (“Good Luck, Babe”).
Sabrina Carpenter clinched her second-ever Grammy win for best pop vocal album Sunday night (Feb. 2), courtesy of her 2024 home-run project Short n’ Sweet. The “Espresso” singer expressed gratitude at the 2025 Grammy Awards after edging out Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan in a heavyweight showdown for pop supremacy. “I […]
After picking up her first career Grammy during the premiere ceremony for best pop solo performance (“Espresso”), Sabrina Carpenter shut down the stage at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday night (Feb. 2). After a brief video segment chronicling her career-shifting 2024 — including pivotal moments such as her viral live debut of “Espresso” […]
Is Ye finally looking to move past his troubled history with Taylor Swift?
On Sunday (Feb. 2), just hours before the 67th annual Grammy Awards, the rapper and fashion mogul — formerly known as Kanye West — raised eyebrows regarding his relationship with the pop superstar, posting a cryptic message on his Instagram Story to reveal that he was now following only one person on the platform: Swift.
“1 following,” Ye, 47, posted to his 20.6 million followers, sharing a screenshot of his Instagram page. The next post showed Swift, 35, as the lone person he follows.
As of Saturday night, Ye had unfollowed everyone — including his wife, Bianca Censori — except for Swift, according to TMZ.
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In addition to Swift, Ye also posted about his recent Grammy nomination for “Carnival,” his collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign, which is nominated for best rap song at this year’s ceremony. The track, also featuring Rich the Kid and Playboi Carti, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart last March.
“Thank you to the Grammies for nominating Carnival,” Ye wrote on IG alongside a photo of a Grammy trophy. The image tagged the likes of Swift, Ty Dolla $ign, Playboi Carti, Rich the Kid and the Recording Academy.
It’s still unclear whether Ye will attend the ceremony, which is set to air live from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Swift and Beyoncé, both of whom are nominated for album of the year, are expected to be there. Bey leads the nominations with 11, while Swift has six, including her nod for The Tortured Poets Department, alongside Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
Ye and Swift’s relationship has been one of the most notorious feuds in the music industry. It all began in 2009 when Ye interrupted Swift’s VMA acceptance speech to declare that Beyoncé deserved the best female video award instead. Though the two eventually reconciled, their tension reignited when Ye claimed in his 2016 track “Famous” that the incident helped launch Swift’s career.
When Swift slammed Ye for the song, he claimed that he got the “Karma” singer’s blessing on a phone call before its release, which she denied. After that, his then-wife Kim Kardashian posted an edited recording of their conversation to portray Swift as a liar, something the latter spoke about as recently as last year.
“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she told TIME in her Person of the Year cover story in December 2023. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.”
Check out the complete timeline of Ye and Swift’s relationship here.
Ariana Grande will happily sing Sabrina Carpenter‘s “Espresso,” in case anyone thought otherwise — or at least do a dramatic reading of the lyrics. “This is ‘Espresso’ by Sabrina Carpenter? What is it doing here?” she asks in a video uploaded by W Magazine on Saturday (Feb. 1), where she’s on an interview set and […]
