If you’re tempted to have a flutter on who will win Record Of The Year at this year’s Grammys, it might be worth taking a look at a study which predicts who will win the prize at the ceremony next month.
The study - put together by ‘in store music providers’ Startle - has analysed the winners of the award over the last 50 years - including their respective tempi, danceability, artist age, genre and gender - and has made a bold prediction.
It says that Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso has an odds-on chance of winning - 80%, in fact.
Espresso ticks many of the right boxes. It’s positive, danceable, upbeat and very catchy. If Carpenter does scoop the prize it will be the second time in a row that a Disney Channel alumnus has won the award, after Miley Cyrus picked up Record Of The Year in 2024 for Flowers.
Behind Carpenter with a 71% chance of winning are the Beatles with Now And Then. OK, it didn’t sell/stream as many as Espresso, but among the factors in its favour is that, incredibly, though they have been nominated four times, the Fabs have never won this award.
Also the Grammy academy has in the past tended to go for the safe, conservative option. And after having female solo artists winning in four of the last five years, the judges may prefer to go with a male group this time.
If they wanted to be more daring, they could go for Kendrick Lamar’s Drake diss track Not Like Us, which has a 70% chance of winning, the same figure as Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! However, despite it becoming the most streamed track of the year on Spotify, Startle rates the chances of Billie Eilish’s Birds Of A Feather at just 61%. Eilish won the award in 2020 and 2021 and it would be a surprise if she converted those into a hat-trick, the study suggests.
Startle’s survey also unearths some other fascinating figures. Male solo artists are still the most likely to win the award - they picked up 26 of the last 50. Female solo artists have won 16 times and mixed gender groups just seven times. And there has been one non-binary winner - Sam Smith in 2016, although at the time the singer still identified as male.
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