Let’s Talk About The Grammys

Best Dressed, Performances, and of course, the Awards

By: Chanel Thorpe

Graphic by Charlie Tran

One of the most important, most influential, and most talked-about award shows of the year. The chance to see your favorite artist be recognized for their work over the past year. This year, my friend and I tried to predict who would win each award before the awards were presented. One of the predictions I remembered making was that Billie Eilish was definitely going to win at least one thing this year, especially with the amount of what I could only describe as “complaining” from her posse after Beyoncé won Album of the Year last year. 

This year, Billie won Song of the Year with “WILDFLOWER” over Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild”, Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra”, and Doechii’s “Anxiety”. While I might’ve been slightly upset that Lady Gaga lost in this category, I was overjoyed that she won Best Pop Vocal Album. It was hands down one of my favorite albums of the year. And can I be honest? I didn’t realize Justin Bieber dropped an album last year.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t watch the Grammys.  I ended up thoroughly regretting it after my mom texted me, “Why is J Bieber performing with just boxers on… N socks?” My first reaction was, more or less, unsurprised that he chose that attire and more surprised that he was even there in the first place. While this one didn’t blow my mind, many of the performances that night seemed to have gotten some interesting reactions online, Katseye being one of them.

Katseye has had quite the interesting year, beginning with “Gnarly” and ending with “Internet Girl”. Many Katseye fans (Eyekons) were shocked that Katseye performed "Gnarly" rather than other songs at the Grammys. While I personally don’t care much that they performed Gnarly rather than their other songs, I have been thinking about the outfit choices. I actually saw a TikTok of the outfits' creators before seeing the outfits myself, and seeing the number of comments bashing them made me look for them myself. They weren’t bad...just not exactly what I would expect for the Grammys or for a girl group like them.

A performance that honestly surprised me in a good way is Addison Rae. I'm not going to lie, Addison has taken a complete 180-degree turn. Her rebrand is so fierce to the point that we’ve almost completely separated her from her TikTok era, which is definitely a goal of hers anyway. But while her performance and outfit were amazing, what genuinely surprised me was her stage presence. Stage presence is not something you can easily fake, and I truly think that, even if the journey was different from many, she was meant to be a pop star. It’s certainly working.

Because of this, I totally thought Addison Rae would’ve won Best New Artist because of her striking popularity. It was one of the predictions I had made earlier that day with my friend. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that Olivia Dean won! While I don’t listen to her music, I think her voice is beautiful and has a warm, comforting tone. She is talented and deserves that recognition.

Ultimately, the Grammys this year were far less disappointing than previous years, and I’m excited to see where these artists and new artists will go in 2026!