The 2025 Grammys took place Sunday, Feb. 2nd in Los Angeles and aired at 8 P.M. EST. This year’s ceremony was exciting, but not necessarily rewarding for all, specifically, for fans of Billie Eilish who hoped to see her receive an award for her record-breaking album “Hit Me Hard and Soft”.
Eilish, a 23 year old singer-songwriter, has a total of 32 Grammy nominations and 9 Grammy wins throughout her career. She is arguably one of the biggest voices of Generation Z and is currently on a world tour, called “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT THE TOUR”.
She was nominated for seven separate categories at this year’s Grammys, being one of the most nominated artists of this year’s biggest night of music. This includes nominations for “Best Pop Vocal Album”, “Best Dance Pop Recording”, “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance”, “Best Pop Solo Performance”, and three of the largest categories, “Song of the Year”, “Album of the Year”, and “Record of the Year”. One of these nominations was for her song “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE [OVER NOW EXTENDED EDIT]”, another was for the song “Guess” where she was featured on Charli xcx’s track, two of these nominations were for her album “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT”, and the other three were for her song “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”.
However, this depiction of excellence and the tremendous success she has had this year was not followed by a Grammy win. Those who seem to be the most distraught by this are Eilish’s fans. Videos have circled the web of clips from each time Eilish did not win an award with captions that “her smile got smaller every time she lost” and images that many fans believe show her eyes beginning to tear throughout the award show. Fan’s took this as evidence that she was disappointed about this year’s outcome, which led to many siding with her and expressing their opinions that she deserved to win.
The loss that seems to be the most controversial was for the category “Album of the Year,” which was awarded this year to Beyonce for “Comboy Carter.” Fans immediately disagreed with this decision and many demonstrated their emotions through online platforms.
One video on instagram shows a video from Eilish’s concert and has the caption “You’re telling me Comboy Carter made you feel like this?” This video alone has 4.3 million views, 426 thousand likes, and 24.8 thousand shares. Another viral video with 7.2 million views and 78.4 thousand likes expresses that Beyonce utilized a total of 72 writers in creating the album “Comboy Carter”. They put this into context by stating that the recent past winners for album of the year, Taylor Swift for “Midnights” and Harry Styles for “Harry’s House”, only had 5 writers total, showing the extensive work that each artist put into winning this award. Also, in 2020, when Billie Eilish won for “WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?”, it is stated that the writers were simply her and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, who produces for and works alongside Eilish during many projects.
To continue, according to Rolling Stone, “Billie Eilish ‘Bird of a Feather’ is Spotify’s most-streamed song of 2024”, with this single being a part of “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT”. With this huge amount of success, many argue that she deserved the win, especially if one of her track’s was this year’s most successful.
However, even though fans are taking these losses personally, it is possible that Eilish is not allowing it to get to her. Specifically, after this year’s award show, Finneas took to Instagram to express the need for peace between different fan bases. He wrote on an Instagram story,“Great Grammys!!! So honored to have been nominated amongst so many amazing songs/albums. I don’t wanna see ANYONE with a photo of me or Billie as their PFP [profile picture] gettin’ in fights with other artists’ fans in comment sections!!! Be at peace! Congratulations to all!”
This shows, even though a loss is never easy, especially when a win seems so deserved, Eilish still has several wins under her belt and with her immense talent, many more can be expected in her future.
