Popularity matters — whether you’re running for class president, looking to nab your first Oscar, or trying to win big at the Grammys. The more attention you can earn, the greater your chance of success.
With the 2025 Awards Season in full swing, much of the spotlight is on the upcoming 67th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on February 2nd. Last year, when Taylor Swift made history by winning her fourth Album of the Year award, social media erupted with opinions — was the win deserved? (Spoiler: It was.)
But the truth is, Grammy voters aren’t all that different from the rest of us. Maybe they aren’t on Stan Twitter quite as much, but their voting habits often mirror public sentiment.
So will the same patterns prevail with this year’s Grammy nominations? And can we use Hootsuite Social Listening to identify the most popular nominees on social media and predict the night’s biggest winners in categories like Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist?
There’s only one way to find out. Let’s dive in!
Key terms
- Results refers to the number of individual social media posts that mention a specific keyword. It’s not a measure of how many times a keyword was used (e.g., a single post that mentions “Chappell Roan” 5 times is still equal to 1 result).
- Engagement is measured by the number of interactions a post receives, such as comments, reactions, or shares.
- In social listening, sentiment measures how many positive or negative keywords appear along a specific search term.
- Net sentiment is the difference between positive and negative sentiment. For example, if 50% of posts on a topic are positive and 75% are negative, the net sentiment is -25%. A positive score means favorable sentiment outweighs negative sentiment, while a negative score indicates the opposite.
- Potential reach represents the estimated number of people who could see a post based on factors like followers, page likes, or website traffic. It doesn’t reflect actual views or engagement, only the maximum possible audience size.
Best New Artist: Who will Switch it up like Nintendo?
2024 was a big year for new and emerging artists — and it wasn’t without controversy. This year’s Grammy nominees for Best New Artist sparked heated debates, particularly over Sabrina Carpenter’s eligibility for the award.
While Carpenter’s first studio album was released in 2015, the Grammys ruled that 2024’s Short n’ Sweet was her “breakthrough album,” making her eligible to compete for Best New Artist.
The decision may have raised a few eyebrows, but it’s hard to argue against Carpenter’s dominance — both in music and on social media.
Sabrina Carpenter is currently the most talked-about nominee in this category, driving 49.1M cumulative engagement in 2024.
With huge hits like Espresso, viral brand deals with Dunkin Donuts, and a Tiny Desk concert that racked up 8.8 million views on YouTube in under a month, it would be hard to argue that Carpenter hasn’t had a truly outstanding year.
But Carpenter isn’t the only artist in this category earning plenty of online buzz.
Fellow breakout pop star Chappell Roan exploded onto the scene last year with The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, and she may be Carpenter’s closest competition for Best New Artist.
Carpenter may have the edge, though, when it comes to net sentiment score, which measures how positive or negative social media discussions are.
Compared to Roan, Carpenter has generated far more positive conversations, giving her the apparent edge in both popularity and public perception.
And while Carpenter and Roan are leading the social race, we can’t overlook Doechii. While she didn’t have big numbers throughout 2024, the first few weeks of 2025 have been massive for her. Even if Doechii doesn’t win Best New Artist this year, she’s starting 2025 strong.
Who was social media’s “Best New Artist”?
Answer: Sabrina Carpenter
With both widespread popularity and overwhelmingly positive sentiment behind her, the Grammy’s most “controversial” Best New Artist nominee has captured social media’s attention.
Unlike the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, which focuses on songwriting, Record of the Year recognizes the overall production, performance, and impact of a song.
Grammy history tends to favor the year’s most popular songs for ROTY. Past winners, including I Will Always Love You, Rolling In The Deep, and Uptown Funk, highlight the award’s tendency to celebrate commercially and culturally significant tracks — many of which go on to become enduring classics.
This year, one song managed to capture the attention of more social media users than any other track: Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us.
Swift’s Fortnight (feat. Post Malone) and Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ‘Em generated significant buzz in early 2024. But Kendrick Lamar’s Drake-targeting diss track set social media ablaze when it dropped on May 4th, 2024.
The song’s impact lasted far beyond May. It surged back into the spotlight after a powerful live performance on Juneteenth and generated even more conversation after the music video was released on July 4th.
Not Like Us sparked even more social media discussion in December and early January 2025, when Drake filed two lawsuits against Lamar in response to the track.
The lawsuits may have added some controversy to the narrative. But they also helped ensure that Not Like Us stayed top-of-mind during Grammy voting season. The extra attention, courtesy of Drake, may have helped position the track as a frontrunner for Record of the Year.
What was social media’s “Record of the Year”?
Answer: Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us
With multiple viral peaks, Not Like Us dominated online conversations this year. And how rich would it be if the song’s target inadvertently helped ensure Not Like Us secured its Grammy?
Album of the Year: They can’t all be so tortured, so poetic
When it comes to 2024’s Album of the Year, one juggernaut stands out: Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
From the moment it was surprise-announced at the 2024 Grammy Awards, the buzz surrounding TTPD was unparalleled. The announcement alone generated more social media conversation than most artists’ actual release dates.
And as Swift’s Eras Tour continued to dominate headlines throughout 2024, the chatter never stopped. By year’s end, TTPD had amassed 20 million social media engagements, reaching an audience of nearly 300 billion.
To put that into perspective, the album generated 200% more results than the second-most discussed album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. In terms of cultural impact, no other release came close.
If you add up social media results for all other nominees, their combined number still fails to reach TTPD’s results.
However, Grammy voters may weigh more than just reach and volume when deciding on Album of the Year. The overall sentiment of online discussion may also be a factor. On that point, TTPD scored the lowest of all the nominees.
Still, the sheer volume of conversation about Swift’s album (remember, 633k results!) makes some negativity almost inevitable.
You may be surprised to see the relatively small impact of Charli XCX’s BRAT album. After all, it was even adopted by an American presidential candidate as a brand.
And while BRAT failed to garner massive streaming numbers, overall mentions for the term seem to illustrate the album’s impact:
Thanks to the popularity of the “Brat Summer” aesthetic, the term saw a 197% increase since the album’s announcement. As summer came to an end, though, so did the term’s popularity.
@bffspod @Brianna LaPaglia tries to explain to @Dave Portnoy ♬ original sound – BFFs Pod
What was social media’s “Album of the Year”?
Answer: The Tortured Poets Department
TTPD’s social impact and results were higher than those of the rest of the albums combined. The album was also consistently talked about throughout the year.
Will Swift actually secure a record-breaking fifth Album of the Year Grammy? It seems unlikely, especially with betting markets favoring other contenders, given that she just won the award last year.
But if TTPD is out of the running, who may actually take home the award on Sunday night? Our second best guess is Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
With the album’s strong engagement, sentiment, results and reach, Beyoncé may finally win her first Album of the Year award. And if she does, it will be for an album that states “AOTY I don’t win, I ain’t stuntin’ bout them” — which would make the victory even sweeter.
Ready to get into social listening? With Hootsuite, you have brand mentions, trending topics, and sentiment info at your fingertips. Start enhancing your social strategy with the insights that matter today.
