The two met at least occasionally when it came to the Grammys and CMA Awards. For example, at one time, Shania Twain and her ilk could earn top nominations for both shows. But those days appear to be over for country music when it comes to Grammy wins in the categories commonly referred to as the Big Four. As a genre, country seems to be being ghosted by Grammy voters.
In 2025, there will be a total of 32 nominations in the top four categories. Of these 32 nominations, country or country-adjacent artist recognition: zero.
Now, the country is not alone in failing to earn a seat at the big kids’ table. Rock could sit next to Country at the bar, drink Slovak in hand, and whisper, “Welcome to the club.” Of course there are differences. No matter how popular oldies are, no hardcore apologist would argue that rock ‘n’ roll has experienced a major commercial renaissance since the turn of the century. On the other hand, it is clear from both anecdotal evidence and hard data that this is an already huge genre that is experiencing significant growth spurts every year, thanks to the infusion of fresh blood in both artists and audiences.
So maybe it’s the quality? Are Grammy voters becoming more discerning, quietly deciding that nothing Nashville has to offer meets their impossibly high standards of “ordinary” or “swag”?
Some people would certainly argue that. But for the sake of argument, let’s take a look at next week’s CMA Awards field. Most country-savvy commentators who look at the CMA’s list of nominees cite a credibility factor that unites the top candidates. Tied for the most nominations, with six each, are three powerful, almost universally acclaimed young performers: Rainie Wilson, Megan Moloney and Ella Langley. Together they have established that what the genre lacks (unfortunately) in women, it more than makes up for in quality. Just behind this line of little killers is a female artist with four nods. Zack Top is a neo-traditionalist with support in basically every quadrant of the country.
Moloney, Langley, and Top were all eligible for Best New Artist and were even considered front-runners for some of those eight spots. But in the face of such critically acclaimed and commercially notable talent, there’s little the Recording Academy can do but take a quick look and draw conclusions.
“No, thank you…I’m fine now.”
This shutout could be described as an anomaly. After all, this has happened twice since the beginning of the 21st century, in 2018 and 2004, when a project with a weak connection to a country was not nominated for a top four nomination. But if representation in major categories hasn’t deteriorated significantly in recent years, it would be easier to believe that it’s just a temporary cycle.
Consider that even Rainie Wilson, who will stand as this country’s great global ambassador for generations to come, was not nominated for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, or even Best New Artist. She would have been the first nominee in 2022, when both the CMA and ACM gave her the Newcomer of the Year Award. She was being considered more seriously as a top contender in 2023 and 2024, but has emerged MIA again at BNA. She won a Country Grammy in 2024, but was subsequently disqualified from Best New Artist and avoided the embarrassment of missing out on a spot in the BNA category for the fourth year in a row.
There may be arguments and counterarguments on merit for all the other issues we can raise, but when you have several chances to nominate Rainie Wilson for Best New Artist and you keep blowing it, there may be a systemic problem.
And Best New Artist is the category most likely to field at least one country nominee among the Big Four over the past few decades, until this year. Nashville’s shortfall is even more pronounced in the other three cities. For example, only one country song has been nominated for record of the year since Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now” won in 2011, and that was Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’s rather unusual “Old Town Road” in 2020.
On this year’s album, Pickin was almost as lean. Considering Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” is a country album, it’s certainly a winner in 2025. (Even if she didn’t, I definitely did.) It officially declares itself “a Beyoncé album, not a country album,” even if that rhetoric shouldn’t be taken at face value. (I’m pretty sure that’s why the CMAs didn’t nominate her.) Before that, Kacey Musgraves’ “Golden Hour” won in 2019, and some consider it her first post-mainstream country film. This album was preceded by a nomination for Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth in 2017. This album is his first that is not country at all. You might notice a pattern. The last time someone who considered themselves a straight country artist was nominated for straight country album was 10 years ago for Chris Stapleton’s Traveller. And listen, it’s probably a good thing, even admirable, that the Grammys prefer something more rural than traditional radio. But as it turns out, these top categories took a very short path from favoring alternative countries to not favoring any.
But here’s a slightly opposing idea. In the Down Ballot, Actual Country category and adjacent categories like American Roots, Americana, Folk and Bluegrass, the Recording Academy tends to do just fine, or close enough to it. That was the case when the selection of the committee was being considered, and it was the same after it was no longer in place. While each country’s Grammy categories have their own characteristics, such as Willie Nelson not being nominated for all of his biannual albums, nominations in these categories are rare and do not represent something close to a standard of excellence.
And the Academy actually made a great institutional choice this year, splitting what was previously a single country category into two. Best Country Album is now subdivided into Best Contemporary Country Album and Best Traditional Country Album, catching up to what already exists in the R&B field. (Some cynics believed that the Grammys created a traditional country category only to secure a slot that Beyoncé couldn’t win after Beyoncé was upset last year over her defeat of top country contenders. Regardless of what’s actually going on on the board, history is prone to that kind of suspicion. In any case, ironically enough, Charlie Crockett was the only artist of color in either country’s album categories…in traditional country.)
This type of move signals that the Recording Academy’s Nashville division is being taken seriously by higher-ups across the organization, and that Grammy leadership wants to do the right thing on a country-by-country basis. For one of the most popular genres of music, there is no doubt that there is a discussion going on about how to get at least some tokens in the top category.
But is the problem unsolvable? Country is in the strange situation of being able to claim music’s hottest star, Morgan Wallen, who isn’t named Taylor Swift, yet he has declared that he will not be applying for any Grammys this year, implicitly suggesting that he believes his brand of country will never find traction with voters who perhaps view him as elitist. Therefore, most of what voters have to consider are country films that are below the level of blockbusters. So, in theory, it would be easier for a genre artist to slip into Best New Artist…though that doesn’t mean Rainie Wilson is too unknown or underperforming to be included on a record or album.
Then there’s the question of how much more voters can expand if Nashville’s signature campaign is already nearing its limit. The biggest growth has been in the Latin music world, with all Latin Grammy voters invited aboard the mothership. This is an important development (I’m talking about Bad Bunny’s return to the Big Four after a multi-year hiatus), and it will rightfully continue to inspire far more passion than the idea that the Academy needs to scour the nooks and crannies of Music City to enroll more of the types of people it championed in the fan-rich days of the past few decades. (That doesn’t mean the country is much more diverse than it’s generally represented, especially in Nashville’s fan base and workforce, but demographic perceptions aren’t entirely divorced from reality.)
Part of the problem may be a lack of passion for the Grammys within Music Row circles themselves. That’s because they still have hurt feelings from past losses to prominent country artists, or perhaps more importantly, because the CMAs and ACMs are their real focus. No other genre has its own awards ceremony with the same impact as either of these. So it’s easy to see why there isn’t an outpouring of anger when a country falls short at the Grammys, even though that’s not the main criteria. Pop and R&B stars have always been more likely to personally disparage the Grammys than the country folk, who have been trained to ignore them and shrug, “It’s Chinatown, Jake.”
So leveling the playing field for country may be more important to the Grammys than it is to the country community, if only to reflect the reality that the biggest and fastest-growing genres expect to be nominated in at least one of the 32 categories. If the average Academy voter is too apathetic about the country to even check out some of its brightest stars, which I can only assume might be the case, then there might still be room to add a few more members to the roster that they’ve heard of and can join. I guarantee Laney Wilson will be in the Big Four at some point in his career.
And there are important demographic developments occurring in this country, and the Grammys should find a way to celebrate them. It is the resurgence of women as the dominant creative force in this field. If you’ve ever been to something like Megan Moloney’s recent sold-out concert and seen thousands of women screaming at the top of their lungs despite years of being given every indication that their voices don’t matter, you’ll know that this is a small step forward creatively, commercially and culturally. I’m sure the CMA isn’t the only one to realize that Moloney, Langley, and Wilson are killing it with the deck stacked against them right now. Do not fence.
