Grammys boss explains Sabrina Carpenter’s Best New Artist nomination after 6 albums

Sabrina Carpenter has been nominated for Best New Artist at the 2025 Grammys — even though she just dropped her sixth album.

But how can the “Espresso” singer be eligible to win an award for her “new”-ness if she released her first album nine years ago? What the hell determines whether an artist is new?

Harvey Mason Jr., the CEO of the Recording Academy, reflected on the organization’s parameters for Best New Artist in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s difficult, I’ll say that,” he told the outlet. “I was going to say it’s pretty simple, but it’s actually not that simple. It’s difficult, and it’s challenging because it’s a little bit amorphous how you would evaluate best new artist.”

Mason said that the Best New Artist category is less about a musician’s newness and more about their ascension to fame or acclaim. “For me, what it comes down to is when an artist rises to national or international prominence,” he said. “It could be their first record, it could be their sixth record. To me, this feels like a time when our best new artists have broken through and become nationally prominent and are doing amazing work.”

He continued, “It is not an easy calculus to decide which artist fits that criteria and which doesn’t, but I trust our committees that do that work, and I trust the voters to vote for the right people and I’m really pleased with the outcome.”

None of the 2025 nominees actually debuted their first music within the year’s eligibility period. This year’s other nominees for Best New Artist include Benson Boone, who released his first EP in 2022; Doechii, who has released three mixtapes since 2019; Khruangbin, who have recorded five studio albums since 2015; Raye, whose first EP released in 2014; Chappell Roan, whose first EP debuted in 2017; Shaboozey, who released his first album in 2018; and Teddy Swims, whose first EP came out in 2021.

The category’s rules have changed several times since it was introduced in 1960, most notably in 2010 after Lady Gaga was snubbed from the category despite being the year’s biggest new artist. Gaga, whose 2008 song “Just Dance” had been nominated the previous year, was ineligible because artists who have been nominated for Grammys in prior years were not permitted to receive nominations in Best New Artist in subsequent years. 

Gaga prompted the Academy to change its rule so that previous nominees could be nominated for Best New Artists in subsequent years, and the eligibility parameters shifted to allow previous nominees but bar anyone who had released a full album at the time of their first nomination.

It’s worth noting that the Grammys have nominated acts that debuted long before their nomination year since Best New Artist’s inception. For example, Petula Clark received a nod in the category in 1965 despite releasing her first albums in 1956; Marvin Hamlisch won the award in 1975 even though his songwriting and composing career began more than a decade earlier; and Green Day was nominated for the award in 1995 five years after releasing their first album in 1990.

The Grammys’ current criteria for Best New Artist eligibility are somewhat complicated. The Academy’s official rulebook simply requires the artist to have “achieved a breakthrough into the public consciousness and notably impacted the musical landscape” within the eligibility year. The rulebook explicitly bars artists who had ever achieved “prominence” as members of other groups (or groups with any individual members who were prominent as solo artists), but allows “New recording artists who previously achieved recognition in a different discipline, such as songwriters, politicians, actors, astronauts, etc.”

Essentially, the Recording Academy can deem anyone a “New Artist” for the category, so long as they’ve released at least five singles (or one album) and they haven’t released a full album if they’d been nominated for a song in a previous year. That means that despite their age and popularity, never-nominated artists like Luke Bryan and the Spice Girls could have a Best New Artist award in their future.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.