Sabrina Carpenter on Grammy Ballot for Best New Artist; Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Will Compete in Country: Source (Exclusive)

It’s a yee-haw for Beyoncé and Sabrina Carpenter at the Grammys.

Queen Bey’s latest album, Cowboy Carter, will compete for best country album while Carpenter — whose pop star breakthrough came with the release of her sixth album this year — will appear on the ballot for best new artist, according to a source.

The Recording Academy held its screening committee meeting last week, where members determined where albums or songs will compete, as well as who qualified for best new artist, where Carpenter is the frontrunner along with Chappell Roan. Over the years, the academy has updated the rules for best new artist to keep up with the ever-changing music industry, and in the past it has been because it placed a song and album limit, disqualifying certain performers. 

Carpenter, 25, has dominated the charts with “Espresso,” “Please Please Please” and “Taste” — songs that are spending its fifth consecutive week in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, making her the first woman in the chart’s 66-year history to achieve the feat. Her album, Short n’ Sweet, is already platinum and she’s on a sold-out tour. 

Other best new artist contenders include Shaboozey, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims and Megan Moroney. First-round Grammy voting begins Friday until Oct. 15. Nominations will be announced on Nov. 8 and final voting is from Dec. 12, 2024 through Jan. 3, 2025. The live show will air on Feb. 2, 2025 from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Beyoncé’s submission to best country album comes seven years after the academy’s country committee rejected her twangy song “Daddy Lessons” from 2016’s Lemonade. Last month the 43-year-old singer was heavily snubbed at the CMA Awards, where she received zero nominations for Cowboy Carter and its No. 1 single “Texas Hold ‘Em.” She also lost in the 17 categories she was nominated for at last week’s People’s Choice Country Awards.

If Beyoncé — the most decorated artist in Grammy history — earns a best country album nod, it would be her first in the genre and she would become the rare artist who has scored nominations across multiple genres at the Grammys. At the 2017 show, she made history with Lemonade as the first artist to garner nods in the rock, rap, R&B and pop fields in the same year.

For its screening meeting, the academy enlists about 350 volunteer music industry experts to help determine where albums or songs should be placed, and sometimes things get complicated when a song or album has a multi-genre sound and could fit in multiple genres. For the 2023 Grammys, they debated if Beyoncé’s Renaissance should stay in the dance genre, which it did and ultimately won. 

But sometimes what’s decided turns controversial. Nicki Minaj’s No. 1 hit “Super Freaky Girl” got kicked out of rap and was sent to pop, a decision she criticized on social media. Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed and Brandi Carlile’s “Right on Time” were also moved to pop, decisions they did not agree with. And Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were famously booted from rap when they had a breakthrough with the hits “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us,” but the academy’s National Screening Committee overturned that decision and the duo stayed in rap, ultimately dominating and causing a firestorm about the Grammys and its awards process. 

Cowboy Carter — which includes collaborations with Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Linda Martell, Miley Cyrus and Post Malone — drove cultural conversations about Black artists reclaiming the genres they started, including country music. It also boosted the careers of rising country acts like Shaboozey, who appears on two Cowboy Carter tracks and found major success with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — the longest-running No. 1 song of the year — thanks to added visibility courtesy of Beyoncé.

Those who could compete with Beyoncé for best country album include Post Malone, Chris Stapleton, Lainey Wilson, Zach Bryan and Moroney.

Beyoncé has won 32 Grammys, including 21 in R&B, three in rap, two in dance and two for best music video. She’s only won one award in a major category — song of the year for “Single Ladies” — and her other wins include best female pop vocal performance, best music film and best surround sound album. Cowboy Carter is expected to earn a nomination for the top prize, album of the year, and it will mark Beyonce’s fifth album to compete in the category.