Although the past 18 years have been filled with 11 eras, six international sold-out tours and countless Billboard Charts dominance, Taylor Swift’s career has still been met with some misconceptions. The most popular one in recent years has to do with her success (or in my opinion, lack thereof) at music’s biggest night: The Grammy Awards. If you ask anyone on “stan twitter,” Swift has been over awarded at the event throughout her career and at times has been branded a “Grammy darling.” This term refers to someone the Recording Academy frequently awards wins to and is therefore a favorite to win. The first names that come to mind being Billie Eilish, Adele, and Bruno Mars (who has won nine of his last ten nominations). Notice Swift was not named, because if you take a look at her statistics, you’ll see that she is not spoiled by the Academy and in actuality has been snubbed on several occasions.
Swift has won 14 of her 58 nominations, which is a 24.14% success rate. Compared to Mars and Adele (Mars has won 48.48%, Adele has won 64%), Swift’s trophy shelf is slacking. Another benefit of being a Grammy darling is the abundance of nominations you receive for each release, just look to Billie Eilish, who has gotten a minimum of 5 nominations for each of her three studio albums. Swift on the other hand, has not been so lucky, with albums “Speak Now” and “reputation” being shut out of the big four categories all together. Her other albums like “Lover” and “evermore” received one nomination of the big four category but left empty-handed. “Speak Now” and “Lover” got a total of three nominations, and “reputation” and “evermore” only received one.
One reason some have deemed Swift to be a Grammy darling may be due to her continued success in one category: Album of the Year. Swift is the only artist to have won it four times, doing so with her albums “Fearless,” “1989,” “Folklore” and “Midnights.” Despite this dominance, the Grammys have long alluded Swift of the award she most covets: Song of the Year.
Song of the Year is one of the “big four” awards (along with AOTY, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist), and recognizes songwriting specifically, which is notably Swift’s greatest asset. She has been nominated a record eight times for the award. But the Academy has seemingly dubbed Swift an album artist, with 2013 being the last time a Swift song won a Grammy (“Safe & Sound” won for Best Song Written for Visual Media). Notably, Swift’s biggest snub must be “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” losing SOTY to “Just Like That” by Bonnie Raitt. “ATW” has been heavily regarded as Swift’s magnum opus, with the extended version breaking several Billboard Chart records.
It may seem dramatic to complain about a lack of Grammy nominations for an artist of Swift’s stature, one sporting 58 nominations, but if you look at not only the quality of her discography, but the success and pop culture significance, you can see that aspects of Swift’s work have been overlooked. For example, think of her post Kimye-drama comeback album “reputation” that broke the internet in 2017. Its lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” was inescapable, with the music video garnering 1.5 billion views. Whether you like the song or not, for it to not garner an individual nomination (like Best Music Video) is a massive oversight to say the least.
Therefore, Swift is not a Grammy darling. She may hold Grammys records, but the Academy only awards Swift when her work is undeniable. For example, “Fearless” is the most awarded country album of all time and “folklore” was one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2020. Although just because she isn’t a darling, doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be. No matter how much one may hope, it is stated in the Grammy voter guideline that Recording Academy Voting Members are “entrusted to cast their votes based solely on the artistic and technical merits of eligible product.” This means that votes aren’t to be influenced by a project’s success or relevance, just on quality. This has been controversial to some, including myself, arguing that the awards should reflect not only the best product of the past year, but one culturally relevant as well. Others have claimed that just because the Grammys state this is their policy, doesn’t mean they follow through with it. Publications like Business Insider and GoldDerby have speculated that Swift was only awarded her fourth AOTY win for “Midnights” due to her culturally dominant 2023, which included the infamous Eras Tour and being named TIME’s Person of the Year.
Taylor Swift is nothing if not a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter (named one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015) who consistently releases high-quality and immensely successful projects. She deserves more respect from the Grammys.