Philadelphia area musicians nab several 2025 Grammy nominations

Beyoncé leads the Grammy nods this year with 11 nominations, bringing her career total to 99 and making her the most-nominated artist in Grammy history.

Her album Cowboy Carter is up for album and country album of the year, and “Texas Hold ’Em” is nominated for record, song, and country song of the year. She also received nominations in a wide swath of genres, including pop, country, Americana, and melodic rap performance categories.

Newark, N.J., native Lauryn Hill was the last Black woman to win album of the year, for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999. Before her, Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston were the only other Black women to win this award. If Beyoncé wins album of the year next year, she’ll become the first Black woman to do so in the 21st century.

» READ MORE: Dan DeLuca | Beyoncé is taking us to school in ‘Cowboy Carter.’ Made in America could be the best classroom.

The 2025 Grammy nominations were announced Friday, and Berks County’s own Taylor Swift and Bucks County’s Sabrina Carpenter (who is a first-time nominee) boast six nominations each.

Swift and Carpenter were each nominated for record of the year (“Fortnight feat. Post Malone” and “Espresso,” respectively), album of the year, and best pop vocal album (Swift with The Tortured Poets Department and Carpenter with Short n’ Sweet).

“Fortnight” is also in the running for song of the year and best music video, and “Us” with Gracie Abrams for best pop duo/group performance.

Carpenter, whose “Espresso” catapulted her into fame this year, is also nominated for song of the year with “Please Please Please,” best new artist, and best pop solo performance for “Espresso.” The song, which our pop music critic called a “frothy, nonsensical hit single that looks to have the legs to become a song-of-the-summer contender,” is also nominated for best remixed recording in its “Mark Ronson x FNZ Working Late Remix” avatar.

But they’re not the only Philadelphia-area Grammy hopefuls.

University of Pennsylvania grad John Legend, who was in town late last month, is up for a best children’s music album Grammy with My Favorite Dream, which was produced by Sufjan Stevens.

Lakecia Benjamin, who performed at Penn LIve Arts in 2022, is up for a best jazz performance Grammy with Phoenix Reimagined (Live), on which she collaborated with Jeff “Tain” Watts, John Scofield, and Cheltenham native trumpeter, flugelhornist, and composer Randy Brecker.

Best large jazz ensemble album contender Walk a Mile in My Shoe is the fifth album by the Captain Black Big Band, led by Philadelphia native pianist and composer Orrin Evans. The album, about Evans’ experience of living with neurofibromatosis on his left foot, released in August. Later this month, on Nov. 29, the Grammy-nominated ensemble will play at Perelman Theater.

Among best Americana performance contenders is Madi Diaz and Kacey Musgraves’ “Don’t Do Me Good.” Diaz, now a Nashville resident, grew up in Lancaster.

On the classical music side, Philadelphians Karen Slack and Michelle Cann were nominated in the best classical solo vocal category for Beyond the Years, an album of unpublished works by Florence Price. Soprano Slack is a laureate of Astral Artists and a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, and Cann is a graduate of and piano professor at the school.

Philadelphia’s Crossing choir, conductor Donald Nally, and vibraphone player Dan Schwartz were cited in the best choral performance category for Ochre, an album of works by Ayanna Woods, George Lewis, and Caroline Shaw.

The Philadelphia Orchestra wasn’t nominated this year, though its music and artistic director showed up in several categories. The London Symphony Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Bradley Cooper were nominated for best compilation soundtrack for visual media for their work on the soundtrack to the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro. In best opera recording, two releases with Nézet-Séguin and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus were nominated: Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas and Kevin Puts’ The Hours.

“The breadth and the variety of genres represented in the general field feels new and really exciting,” Recording Academy CEO and President Harvey Mason Jr told the Associated Press. “We’ve been very intentional in how we looked at and tried to rebalance our membership. So not just gender or people of color, different racial makeup, but also genre equity and trying to make sure that all different types of music in different regions and different locations are being represented in every way possible.”

The 2025 Grammy Awards will air Feb. 2 live on CBS and Paramount+ from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Pop music critic Dan DeLuca contributed to this article, which contains information from the Associated Press.