It was a “spread the love” kind of Grammys, with hardly any sweeps to speak of, the closest obviously being Kendrick Lamar winning in five out of nine categories. His strength at the 2026 Grammys, primarily in the rap categories, plus a key score for record of the year, hardly counted as a surprise. Elsewhere, nearly every major star with multiple nominations had to settle for just one or two, so there weren’t too many truly harsh shutouts. It felt like an “a trophy for everyone!” kind of year…
Well, almost everyone. Somewhat shockingly, Sabrina Carpenter, who came in with six nods, left empty-handed. Meanwhile, Lola Young, who is much admired but wasn’t expected to win anything, provided one of the big shocks of the night by beating four of today’s top superstars in a key pop category, which helped jolt awake everyone watching the nearly four-hour pre-telecast “premiere ceremony.”
Here are a few of this year’s perceived snubs and surprises:
SURPRISE: Bad Bunny goes where no Latin music has gone before at the Grammys. It doesn’t feel quite right calling Bad Bunny’s win in the climactic album of the year category a “surprise”… because we at Variety predicted it! Huzzah for us, but as we said at the time, we were going out on a big limb with that one. There were plenty of reasons to think it wouldn’t happen: The strength of the competition, including Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga, either of whom was predicted by plenty of soothsayers to take this category. More significantly to doubters, perhaps, a Spanish-language recording has never previously won in any of the top four categories. And Bad Bunny’s previous album wasn’t even nominated in the category, so it would’ve been easy to assume his support in the Academy was to shallow to push him to the top this time.
But one factor that made us believe “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” was in line for a historic win here was the fact that all of the Latin Grammy voters had recently been invited to vote for the standard Grammys — quite a quick fix for the genre’s perceived underrepresentation. Plus: the album was a very well-reviewed monster, just the way the Academy likes it. And if there was any slight inclination to stick it to Super Bowl halftime haters by giving the superstar an additional vote of confidence here, that just could have been the irresistible icing on the cake for some voters on the bubble about this one.
SNUB: Sabrina Carpenter goes home with nothing but a lot of love for that “Manchild” production number. Some may say Carpenter came back too soon with a followup album after her breakout successes of the previous year. Yet it’s hard to see anything about her strategy there as a mistake, since “Manchild” was a legitimate monster, and so was her “Man’s Best Friend” album, by just about every measure other than 2026 Grammy wins. When it comes down to it, there was just too competition for all of this year’s multiply nominated pop superstars to win something, and Carpenter was left without a seat in the ceremony’s game of musical chairs.
There’s no shame in coming up short there when what viewers will remember most is the performance Carpenter gave near the top of the show, with a seeming cast of thousands joining her on an airport baggage claim set that looked big enough to extend halfway to LAX. Carpenter seldom fails in delivering a high-concept production number, and producers were surely pleased she got the show off to such an infectiously giddy start, even if she wasn’t compensated for it in gold.
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SURPRISE: Lola Young beats all the pop masters of the universe in a key category. Is there anyone whose predictions list or bingo card had Young winning best pop solo performance on it? When she was up against Carpenter, Gaga, Chappell Roan and Justin Bieber, any of whom tower over the British singer in stateside awareness? Yes, she is an artist to beat when it comes to her native U.K., and if critics voted, we would have made a case for her to have a fighting chance here. But it also seemed like the winds might have been prevailing against her when she dropped out of a recent tour — wisely deciding that her health was more pressing than keeping up her public momentum, let alone campaigning for a Grammy.
Her album (“I’m Only F**king Myself”) is wonderful, and “Messy” was a significant streaming hit, but Young is not for everyone. So count this left-field choice as a happy one, even if she wasn’t your rooting interest here — she’s the kind of wild card that makes Grammy-watching fun. And in lieu of best new artist, for which she was nominated (but always destined to fall to Olivia Dean), this provides a platform for discovery of a singer who has the potential to be around for decades, the sort of thing the Academy loves to have on its track record.
Christopher Polk/Billboard
SNUB: Justin Bieber’s track record of being underloved at the Grammys continues. Bieber has more cred than ever at this point, with a lot of critical and tastemaker support for his two “Swag” albums, which lean toward a more interesting lo-fi sound than the big productions he’s been known for. That was enough to get him four nominations for this year’s awards, but not a win. That’s in keeping with his overall Grammys history: 27 nominations and only two wins.
In truth, Bieber was not particularly favored in any of the major categories this year, despite those four marquee nods. There were just too many solid favorites up against him to imagine his comeback narrative after four years out of the limelight would be enough to let him overcome someone with as much currency at the moment as Kendrick or Bad Bunny. (The loss to Lola Young may sting a little more, as it did for all the other stars in that category.) Folks did enjoy his unexpected solo performance on the telecast — even if it was hard to tell from his off-stage demeanor whether he was unhappy to be there or just had a case of resting-Justin-face — and the classic words suffice: He’ll be fine.
SURPRISE: Billie Eilish is a force to be reckoned with, even commercially off-cycle. The Grammys love Eilish so much, we always have to consider her a possible winner any time she’s up at bat for anything… as we noted in calling her a dark horse in the song and record of the year categories. With that said, it seemed like it might not be Eilish’s year just because “Wildflower” is a late-looming remnant of an album that came out in 2024 and was in contention last year. But apparently voters don’t think “old news” is bad news when they love someone as much as they do Billie and Finneas. She’s one of those rare return nominees who has appeal to twentysomething and seventysomething voters alike — a pop classicist at heart who also has a winningly brash surface.
Plus, a hit is a hit, and “Wildflower” was a huge one, even if it bloomed in the shadow of the even bigger “Birds of a Feather.” Speaking of which… why did “Birds” not pick up anything last year? Maybe that “snub” for one of the great songs of the past few years put a little wind in the sails of her supporters to enact justice this time.
SNUB: K-pop (mostly). “Golden” had to settle for the silver. The smash hit from “KPop Demon Hunters” did not get ignored altogether: It won, inevitably, for best song written for visual media, and with that, it became the first K-pop recording ever to win a Grammy. It fell short for song of the year (losing to Eilish) and pop duo/group performance (to Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s big “Wicked” song), the other spots where it had a chance. But the real snub was felt back at the nominations level, when it didn’t pick up a nomination for record of the year.
“APT.” by Rosé and Bruno Mars also came up empty, despite multiple nods. It was a huge song, obviously, but not one that was favored in the prognosticating. Rosé was a first-timer, but Mars has a huge history with the Grammys — who may have just felt the need to let the fields lay a little bit fallow between the gigantic-ness of “Die With a Smile” and his forthcoming album probably being a big force at next year’s Grammys. But do Recording Academy voters just still have a thing about honoring K-pop artists, even in collaboration with their A-list favorites? Can’t rule it out.
From Variety US