Predicting the Record of the Year race for the 2027 Grammys is both super easy and super challenging… depending on whether we’re focused on narrowing down the thousands of first-ballot contenders to eight nominees, or whether we’re jumping ahead to fixate on who the ultimate winner will be. It’s the nominations we feel like we have a pretty good handle on. That’s a different story, with at least a few completely viable scenarios about which candidate will finally prevail.
So it’s a good thing that, for the moment, the primary task is just to soothsay who will end up in making it to the field of eight. In real terms, the race is just getting underway, as general ballots went out to Recording Academy members on Monday, with first-round voting continuing through Oct. 22. From then, it will be several weeks until the nominees are announced on Nov. 16, nearly two months in advance of Music’s Tensest Night, aka the Feb. 7, 2027 Grammy ceremony.
As we did with Variety’s already-published Album of the Year predictions, we’ve narrowed what we see as the top Record of the Year contenders down into clumps — first, a list of 10 frontrunners from which we expect the eight nominees will be picked, followed by 10 more we feel stand at least a decent chance of slipping in, followed by a broader list of dark horses we don’t want to completely ignore. Following that, we take a look at the Song of the Year contest, in which there is inevitably a good deal of overlap but also some distinctions to take into consideration. Take a look and see how these line up with your own prognostications: Also coming up in the conversations: Audrey Hobert’s “Sue Me,” Phoebe Bridgers’ “Lost Boys,” Lady Gaga and Doechii’s “Runway,” Stella Lefty’s “Boston,” Karol G’s “Bby Wow,” Paul McCartney’s “Days We Left Behind,” Kehlani’s “Out the Window,” Cardi B’s “Errtime,” Ravyn Lenae’s “Handle,” Katseye’s “Animal,” Megan Moroney’s “Beautiful Things,” Tyla’s “Chanel,” Beyoncé’s “Morning Dew (Donk),” Shakira and Burna Boy’s “Dai Dai,” Justin Bieber’s “Speed Demon,” Dominic Fife’s “Babydoll (Live)” and Doechii’s “Girl, Get Up.” Honestly, we feel unusually confident that the eight nominees will all come from that first list of 10 — which is foolishness, because this is the Grammys, with thousands of voters from wildly different chapters and demographics picking from among thousands of submissions.
A surprise or three is always in order. But it feels close to a settled field. If asked to knock out two from that first field of 10 to get it bravely down to a firm eight, I’d probably dismiss the records by Ariana Grande and Rosalía.
You could say Grande is a longer shot than some of the others just because she hasn’t been that much of a Grammy favorite in top categories in years past, for reasons that still seem puzzling. As for Rosalía, it’s by far the weirdest track under consideration here — opening with a blast of neo-classical symphonic music, then getting down to the artist singing in German and Bjork pleading in English, before ending with a male voice dropping a long succession of sexually intended F-bombs. Plus, Rosalía’s heat may be concentrated more in the Album of the Year category… but these are both just great tracks, mutually well-loved, regardless of whether they make it in amid such tough competition.
So let’s suppose that the final field comes down to Olivia Dean, Noah Kahan, Ella Langley, Bruno Mars, Raye, Olivia Rodrigo, Sienna Spiro and Taylor Swift, to keep with alphabetical order for the moment. That’s a murderer’s row of records right there. If, looking forward toward the ultimate winner, the idea is to continue on with a process of gradual elimination, then we could knock out Mars and Khan, because they’re men, right?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
