At the 66th annual Grammy awards in February, it was hard not to notice a pattern when artists took the stage to accept their accolades: most of them were women.
Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist — the so-called “Big Four” awards — went to Taylor Swift (Midnights), Miley Cyrus (“Flowers”), Billie Eilish (“What Was I Made For?”) and Victoria Monét, respectively. And the girl power didn’t stop there.
Women dominated across several genres, with Best Jazz Performance going to Samara Joy for “Tight,” SZA’s SOS winning Best Progressive R&B Album, Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” earning Best Pop Dance Recording and the all-female supergroup Boygenius winning Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song.
Grammys 2025 Nominations: See the Complete List
The Grammy’s weren’t always so female-forward. As recently as 2018, the hashtag #GrammysSoMale trended, with just one woman — Lorde — earning a nod for Album of the Year and two women — Alessia Cara and Julia Michaels — included in the Song of the Year nominees. No women were nominated for Record of the Year, which went to Bruno Mars, along with Album of the Year and Song of the Year.
Times have changed since 2018. The list of nominees and winners at the 2024 Grammys foreshadowed what was to come for the remainder of the year: a genuinely exciting time to be a fan of pop music, with women at the helm.
2024 might be remembered as the year Chappell Roan was catapulted to superstardom, or the year that Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” got stuck in literally everyone’s head. Maybe it’s the year that Charli XCX easily ended any “song of the summer” competitions when Brat became the album, meme, aesthetic and lifestyle of the summer all at once. It’s hard to pick just one female-led cultural phenomenon to define a year that gave Us so many of them.
Billie Eilish ‘So Happy’ for Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX
In addition to launching Carpenter, Roan and Charli to new levels of household name-level fame, 2024 also saw several seasoned pop princesses reinvent themselves. Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in the middle of her record-breaking Eras Tour, getting more vulnerable — and angry — with her fans than ever before, Beyoncé broke free from the constraints of genre to release her sprawling country concept album, Cowboy Carter, and Ariana Grande proved her acting chops in the film adaptation of Wicked in addition to releasing her critically acclaimed record, Eternal Sunshine.
In an industry where women are often pitted against each other, it seemed like there was room for everyone in 2024. Swift invited Carpenter and Gracie Abrams — whose November single “That’s So True” peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 — onstage at Eras Tour shows, Charli and Lorde candidly explored and healed their frenemy dynamic on the “Girl, So Confusing” remix and Roan shared that Grande was her No. 1 artist on Spotify Wrapped.
There were, of course, some men who made waves this year — Kendrick Lamar’s Drake Diss track “Not Like Us” earned five Grammy nods, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was inescapable and Post Malone was featured on songs with Swift, Beyoncé and Morgan Wallen — but Us thinks it’s safe to say, 2024 was for the girls.
