This year’s Album of the Year field isn’t lacking for front-runners: Any one of these eight LPs would be a worthy victor. But Lady Gaga’s Mayhem is poised to overshadow the rest. The ever-evolving singer, songwriter, and performer has been nominated for the top-album prize before but never took home the gold. That should change on Feb. 1.
The Nominees
Bad Bunny – Debí Tirar Más Fotos
Justin Bieber – Swag
Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend
Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
Lady Gaga – Mayhem
Kendrick Lamar – GNX
Leon Thomas – Mutt
Tyler, the Creator – Chromakopia
The Lowdown
While Lady Gaga has the mojo, Bad Bunny is one to watch as a spoiler, says John Stein, head of North America Editorial at Spotify. “He’s never won outside a Latin category before, and it’s overdue,” Stein says. Benito’s high-profile gig a week after the Grammys — headlining the Super Bowl LX halftime show — also helps his case and raises the Puerto Rican’s profile among voters.
Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia could also upset because of its “very strong message, and the aesthetic tied to it,” according to Stein. The album reflects the best of Tyler’s lush, layered production chops, as well as thematic growth. On “Hey Jane,” he explores the permutations of having a baby, while on “Mother” he juxtaposes his mother’s lessons with the lack of insight from his father. “Tyler gives a dope blueprint, especially with this album, to still be yourself, but to grow the fuck up,” says Genius VP of Music and Content Rob Markman.
Keep an eye on Sabrina Carpenter, too. Her Man’s Best Friend album showcases an artist who’s unapologetically herself and provided the musical year with some of its catchiest hooks — “Manchild” was so irresistible, in fact, that Carpenter wooed country fans with it when she performed the song at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry in October.
Leon Thomas’ Mutt is also a strong contender. The New York singer, songwriter, and producer, who got his start singing on Broadway when he was just 10, is reviving R&B for a new generation, while also paying tribute to its past.
Editor’s picks
And there’s Kendrick Lamar, who may prove to be the ultimate spoiler of Gaga’s Mayhem. His album GNX captured the momentum of K. Dot’s victory over Drake in their musical throwdown and ran with it. Breakout singles like “Luther” sure didn’t hurt, too.
Stein says that GNX is an album that has performed well by nearly every metric: culturally, critically, and commercially. “It feels like a good moment for Kendrick — it seems like he’s a household name in a way he never was in the past,” Stein says. “Which feels great for Album of the Year.”
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Who Should Win
Lady Gaga – Mayhem
Lady Gaga leans hard into her own history on Mayhem, her sixth solo studio album and a record that many consider a return to her dance-pop roots. She turns her own name into a chorus on the unbeatable “Abracadabra,” gets macabre at the club in “Disease,” while bringing it all to vivid life with a career-defining Coachella performance in 2025 and a knockout tour to match. As Rolling Stone said in our four-star review: “Mayhem is the type of fan service that doesn’t dilute the artist. Gaga feels like her most authentic self from start to finish on this album: There’s no characters, concepts, or aesthetic impulses overshadowing the songs. Instead, she has made one of her most sonically challenging and uniform albums yet.” Finally, it is Stefani Germanotta’s time.
Who Will Win
Lady Gaga – Mayhem
Gaga scored three consecutive Album of the Year nominations, beginning in 2010 with The Fame, followed up by The Fame Monster the next year, and Born This Way in 2012. Yet she’s never won. In fact, her only album victories came in the Pop Vocal and Electronic/Dance fields. But more than a decade later, Lady Gaga has experience, momentum, and goodwill on her side, not to mention a stunner of an LP in Mayhem that, as Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt wrote in a December cover story, reclaimed “every bit of her musical Gagatude, in all its multiplicities, after all of her years of shying away from it.” It also helped her find herself. “It was months and months and months of rediscovering everything that I’d lost,” she told Rolling Stone. “And I honestly think that’s why it’s called Mayhem. Because what it took to get it back was crazy.”
