By Isabella Ying
On February 1st, nearly 15 million Americans and their families gathered around their household screens for “Music’s Biggest Night,” or the 68th Grammy Awards. This year, the Grammy Awards took place in Crypto Arena, Los Angeles, and for the final of six consecutive years, was hosted by Trevor Noah.
A Grammy Award is one of the highest honors a musical artist may achieve, as their fellow industry professionals vote on the awards, validating the artist’s authentic, hard work. However, the Grammys are not only important to the winners and nominees, but also to the many fans of these artists worldwide.
For example, my own mother was very passionately disappointed that “APT.” by Bruno Mars and Rosé was overcome by “Wildflower” by Billie Eilish for Song of the Year. On the other hand, freshman Skye Pope felt that the wrongdoing of Billie’s six snubbed awards in 2025 was set right by her win this year.
Freshman London Bryant dared to disagree with Skye about “Wildflower” as we conversed in the Wallace Gym lobby. (She would probably get along with my mom about it.) “I like that song, but it’s kind of like–” London began, but I suppose we’ll never know what London thinks “Wildflower” is “kind of like,” because Skye emphatically defended Billie. “No, it deserved to win,” she insisted.
Skye was not only pleased with Billie’s win, but with nearly everything else about the show. She “absolutely loved it,” and believed that the entire show by far surpassed last year’s. “Seating arrangements were amazing,” she believed. She also added that the “guest list was amazing,” to which Aubri Rucker chimed in. “Superb,” Aubri emphasized. “Everyone was amazing.”
Skye and the girls all appreciated how “they let people speak freely and didn’t mute their mics like sometimes they do.” In addition, Skye felt that “it was a really great use of their platforms to have their ‘ICE out’ pins.”
Then, London once again had to share more qualms about this year’s show. “KATSEYE should have performed ‘Gabriela’ instead of ‘Gnarly,’” she critiqued. “That song wasn’t it,” she said. “I like the song, but it’s not a good performing song for the Grammys,” she clarified. “KATSEYE was horrible,” Aubri agreed, much more bluntly.
Skye also had a least favorite performance: “The worst performance by far was Addison Rae,” she said. She was “really bad.” In a separate interview, Angelina Ricker said that she “needs to learn breath control.”
Some of their favorite performances were Lauryn Hill and Alex Warren—“I liked how Alex Warren did his performance with his earpiece malfunction,” said London. In addition, “Sombr’s performance was amazing and his engagement with all the celebrities was awesome.” Still, London acknowledged how Sombr is “scary.”
Going into the show, Skye had high hopes for her favorite artists. Her first wish was Olivia Dean. “She is so deserving of Best New Artist,” she said. She also wanted Bad Bunny or Tyler, the Creator to win Album of the Year. She and London were both disappointed that Tyler only won Best Album Cover.
Raina Lumpris and Mariella Bishop, in the same interview as Angelina, shared the sentiment of hoping Bad Bunny would win something. (Although, that might have been for different reasons. “He’s so hot,” said Mariella. I am obligated not to share what Raina said, as she told me to “keep that off record.”)
Raina also had strong opinions about certain winners, or rather non-winners. “I’m just glad Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Manchild’ didn’t win,” she said. “I hated that song.” Raina was also glad that Sombr didn’t win anything. “He would unironically ask ‘who created periods?’” Angelina chimed in helpfully, giving me a hint of the group’s sentiment about Sombr.
She was also quite surprised that Olivia Dean won Best New Artist, as she saw her as more of a “one-hit wonder.” Still, she thinks that Olivia Dean “seems so cool.” Raina also thought that “Illegal” by Pinkpanthress should have won something, and was surprised that it didn’t.
This group of freshman girls were all clearly Grammy experts, so I wondered what a slightly less involved watcher of the award show thought of it. Henry Thompson became my subject when I asked in a group chat, “Does anyone want to be interviewed about the Grammys for newspaper?” and he replied “Meee” just four minutes later.
Henry quickly admitted that he “didn’t really pay attention to the winners that much.” However, he did pay attention to the Rock Awards, because if you know anything about Henry, you know that he’s probably the biggest rock fan you’ve met. “This band that’s new this year called Turnstile won half of the awards and they’re pretty good,” he explained. “I don’t listen to that much of their stuff, but I guess that’s kind of interesting.” In fact, he’d never heard of them until the Grammys.
Henry also “didn’t really watch the performances.” Nonetheless, he did like “seeing the way that they had all the performances linked together in a row. I thought that was cool.”
However, he did enjoy “Bad Bunny’s speech. That was good. It’s like the only interesting part that I was actually watching.”
When I asked him which nominees he’d been rooting for, and he replied, “I didn’t know anybody who was nominated for anything, to be honest,” I began to wonder why he volunteered for the interview at all…
From what he did see, Henry observed that many of the awards seemed to be influenced by social media. “Even if you don’t like that type of thing,” as in social media, “it plays a big role in culture today,” he said.
Henry watched the show with his family. As they watched the Best New Artist award, his dad said, “This one girl’s going to win. He was so sure of it, but then she actually did win.” After a bit of talking, we discerned that ‘this one girl,’ refers to Olivia Dean.
Overall, there were many contrasting sentiments about the sensational awards, from Olivia Dean and Bad Bunny (yay!) to Sombr and Addison Rae (boo!) to Tyler, the Creator and Pinkpanthress (aww man), but everyone could agree that the show was an entertaining experience.
