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A couple of weeks in the past, Ben Winston and the remainder of the crew behind the annual Grammy Awards telecast had been going over plans for this 12 months’s present when all of the sudden Winston recalled sitting in the identical room with the identical individuals nearly precisely 12 months earlier because the Palisades and Eaton wildfires had been ravaging massive swaths of Los Angeles.
“We had been wanting on the fireplace over the highway from my workplace — you could possibly see it,” the Emmy-winning tv producer remembers. “I keep in mind we had been like, ‘Is there even going to be a present?’”
The Recording Academy ended up going forward with the 67th Grammys albeit with vital adjustments to this system, together with a brand new opening quantity that had the band Dawes (whose drummer Griffin Goldsmith misplaced his residence in Altadena) performing Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” with assist from Sheryl Crow and John Legend, amongst others.
“We principally placed on a Grammy present in two weeks,” Winston says now of final 12 months’s ceremony, which the academy retooled as a fundraiser that introduced in additional than $9 million for fireplace reduction by means of its MusiCares basis. “I look again on it as probably the most insane issues we ever did.”
Preparation for the 68th Grammys — set to air reside on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday evening from Crypto.com Enviornment — goes rather more easily, Winston stories with a glance of reduction. But the present, which he’s overseeing alongside Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins, will nonetheless be a feat to tug off, with about 10 televised award shows and greater than two dozen performers, amongst them Sabrina Carpenter, Pharrell Williams, Addison Rae, Clipse and Alex Warren.
After three years of climbing scores, TV viewership for the 2025 Grammys fell 9% to fifteen.4 million, in keeping with knowledge from Nielsen. So the stress is on to deliver an viewers to Sunday’s telecast, which is able to mark the top of the academy’s half-century partnership with CBS earlier than the Grammys transfer to Disney’s ABC community in 2027.
To listen to what’s in retailer — and what this 12 months’s nominations say in regards to the 12 months in music — The Occasions spoke with Winston and with Recording Academy Chief Govt Harvey Mason Jr.
New voting members within the combine
Let’s get it out of the best way: No, Unhealthy Bunny is not going to carry out on the present. Although the Puerto Rican famous person has six Grammy nods — together with album of the 12 months with “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” and document and music of the 12 months with the LP’s title monitor — his gig subsequent month headlining halftime at Tremendous Bowl LX means he’s not accessible to play the Grammys, in keeping with Winston. (The identical was true final 12 months of Kendrick Lamar forward of his efficiency at Tremendous Bowl LIX.)
The manager producer, who factors out that Unhealthy Bunny is anticipated to attend Sunday’s ceremony, takes a glass-half-full view of not having the ability to ebook considered one of music’s largest acts. “It offers area for any person else to return in and do an incredible efficiency,” Winston says. “I feel it’s proper for each exhibits that we don’t characteristic the identical artists, as a result of we would like the viewers to see new and various things.”
A win for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” would mark the primary time a Spanish-language LP was named album of the 12 months on the Grammys; the academy’s current invitation to members of the Latin Recording Academy would possibly make that final result extra possible, on condition that “Fotos” received album of the 12 months at November’s Latin Grammys ceremony in Las Vegas.
Recording Academy Chief Govt Harvey Mason Jr. in 2024.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions)
Mason talks with satisfaction about what he calls the “evolution” of the academy’s membership, which has grown extra various over his six years as CEO. In November, the group stated it had added 3,800 new members, 58% of whom are individuals of shade and 35% of whom determine as ladies; Mason credit that altering citizens for bestowing high-level nods on artists like Unhealthy Bunny and Rosé, the Blackpink singer whose “Apt.” is the primary music by a Ok-pop act ever nominated for document of the 12 months. (Amongst this 12 months’s different high nominees are Lamar, Carpenter, Girl Gaga, Leon Thomas, Doechii, SZA and Tyler, the Creator.)
Requested half-jokingly if he ever misses the times when Grammy nominations repeatedly impressed outrage over how out of contact the Recording Academy was, Mason says, “I don’t miss individuals being upset. However I additionally don’t low cost that it’s going to occur once more. It’s very arduous to get 95 classes proper and never have any person be offended or really feel neglected.”
Trevor Noah’s final snigger as host
Having hosted the Grammys since 2021 — when a lot of the ceremony befell exterior, with nominees sporting masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic — Trevor Noah has stated this can be his final time main the present.
“He truly intimated that he may not have the ability to do it this 12 months,” Winston says of the comic and former “Every day Present” host. “I went again and begged — like, actually despatched him a video the place I used to be on my knees.”
Mason describes Noah as “tremendous humorous however respectful — and never cringey humorous, which is essential for our present.” Winston provides that “he can cope unbelievably properly on reside tv once I’m in his ear. We’re constructing a Sabrina set and nonetheless taking down the set of the final performer, and I’m going, ‘Actually sorry, mate — it’s good to fill for one more minute and a half.’ He can effortlessly try this with out anyone on the earth realizing what’s occurring in his earpiece. That’s priceless.”
Does the producer know who would possibly substitute Noah in 2027? “I’ve a few concepts, however I haven’t instructed the academy but,” says Winston, who himself took over the Grammys from the present’s longtime producer, Ken Ehrlich, in 2021.
Newbies take the stage
As on final 12 months’s present, all eight nominees for greatest new artist will carry out on Sunday’s telecast, this time in a single prolonged sequence that Winston likens to the expertise of listening to the radio or to a playlist.
“Nobody listens to a music after which they’ve a three-minute break after which they arrive again and pay attention to a different music,” he says. “Raj and Jesse and I actually prefer it after we can press play and it by no means stops.”
Ben Winston, government producer of the Grammys telecast, in 2021.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Occasions)
He additionally has a possible shock efficiency deliberate à la the Weeknd’s look in 2025, which wasn’t introduced prematurely. “It could be my choice to announce it, if I’m sincere, however it would possibly find yourself having to be a shock,” Winston says of no matter he has within the works for Sunday. “Generally artists are like, ‘Don’t say,’ I feel as a result of they need the viewers to be shocked.
“However then the cynical particular person in me additionally thinks perhaps they wish to hedge their guess,” he provides, “in case they don’t fancy doing it on the day.”
New nation award, however no Mo’
Among the many 95 classes Mason refers to is a brand new award for conventional nation album, which the academy added this 12 months in response to a request from the group’s Nashville contingent. (The nation album class — carried final 12 months by Beyoncé with “Cowboy Carter” — has been renamed up to date nation album.)
Mason frames the addition as a solution to acknowledge extra music on the Grammys: “Ten nominations versus 5 is a superb final result,” he says. But one title you received’t discover in both class is the largest star in nation music, Morgan Wallen, who let it’s recognized final 12 months that he’d opted to not submit his blockbuster “I’m the Downside” — the second-most-consumed album of 2025 behind Taylor Swift’s “The Lifetime of a Showgirl” — for consideration by the Recording Academy.
Wallen hasn’t defined his resolution (which follows related ones by the likes of Drake and Frank Ocean), although it’s broadly understood as a rebuke of a worth system he considers out of alignment along with his personal.
Requested for his response, Mason says, “I’m all the time upset when anyone says this isn’t one thing they wish to take part in. I might like to see his music in our course of as a result of I’m a fan and I feel he has lots of people who love what he does. However I respect his alternative.”
Final 12 months’s efficiency by the Weeknd, who’d beforehand boycotted the Grammys in protest of what he characterised as a corrupt voting course of, got here after some decided bridge-building by the academy’s chief. Has Mason tried something related with Wallen?
“I’ve undoubtedly reached out to see if there’s one thing we have to tackle or if there’s one thing that he has a priority with,” Mason says. (Wallen’s rep had no remark.) Provides the CEO: “I’m all the time going to do this as a result of we would like artists to really feel just like the Grammy group is right here for them.”
Welcome again?
One sudden title you will discover on the poll: Fab Morvan.
The previous member of Milli Vanilli is nominated within the audiobook class for his memoir, which recounts the duo’s fast rise with late-’80s hits like “Blame It on the Rain” and “Woman You Know It’s True” and its even faster fall after Morvan and his bandmate Rob Pilatus had been revealed to not have sung on Milli Vanilli’s information.
As a part of the fallout, the academy revoked the duo’s award for greatest new artist — the one time that’s occurred within the Grammys’ practically seven-decade historical past.
“It was such a shock,” Mason says of the lip-syncing scandal. “How do you deal with that? I’m glad I wasn’t within the seat when that was occurring.”
Mason calls Morvan’s return “probably the most distinctive Grammy tales ever” and says, “We’ll see if the voters full the circle by giving him the win.”
Goodbye and hey
Ought to the Grammys’ leaving CBS imply something to the typical viewer?
“It undoubtedly means one thing to me,” Winston says. “I don’t suppose I might have gotten this job if it hadn’t been on CBS as a result of I used to be working ‘The Late Late Present’ [with James Corden], and Jack Sussman, who was at CBS on the time, went, ‘Hey, that man appears all proper — it is best to meet him, Recording Academy.’”
Winston says Sunday’s present will characteristic “a second wanting again at what an unbelievable 50 years it’s been on CBS.” However he’s not considering “a nostalgia play the place we deliver out all of the hosts from earlier years or something like that.”
Waiting for the Grammys’ transfer to ABC — a 10-year deal for which Disney paid greater than $500 million, in accordance to the Wall Avenue Journal — the producer says he’d “love the present to evolve in a roundabout way” at its new residence.
Provides Mason: “You’ll see adjustments, I’m certain of it. If we’re not making adjustments, we’re doing the incorrect factor.”
Requested for his ideas on the information that the Academy Awards will go to YouTube in 2029, Mason says, “The crew on the Oscars are very sharp. They’ve achieved a great job with their group, and I look ahead to seeing what that brings, as a result of it’s one thing that’s completely different.” (Winston declined to remark.)
The concept of the Grammys on YouTube — can Mason envision it?
“The concept of the Grammys on ABC and Disney+ and Hulu — that’s what was thrilling for us,” he says.
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