Grammys: Taylor Swift wins record 4th Album of the Year

Daniel Montgomery
·13 min read
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The 66th Annual Grammy Awards took place on Sunday night, February 4. The ceremony was held at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California, and broadcast live on CBS and Paramount+. Emmy-winning, Grammy-nominated comedian Trevor Noah hosted the festivities for the fourth year in a row. So how did he do? Who gave the most memorable performances? And of course, who were the biggest winners? Scroll down for our live blog with all the minute-by-minute developments throughout the night. And check out the complete list of winners here.

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But before the prime time telecast came the Premiere Ceremony, where the lion’s share of awards were presented. Phoebe Bridgers led the way with four awards including one for “Ghost in the Machine,” her pop collaboration with SZA, and three more with her super group Boygenius, including Best Alternative Music Album for “The Record.” Killer Mike was next with a surprise clean sweep of his three rap categories, including Best Rap Album for “Michael,” where he upset the likes of 21 Savage and Drake (“Her Loss”), Metro Boomin (“Heroes and Villains”) and Travis Scott (“Utopia”).

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So what did all that mean for the evening show? SZA won twice: Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Progressive R&B Album for “SOS.” But she lost two other R&B categories when it seemed like she might sweep the entire field. She did beat Taylor Swift, however, in that pop race, though that was the only award Swift was up for during the pre-show; her other five nominations will be decided during the prime time festivities, and her co-writer/producer Jack Antonoff won Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, perhaps demonstrating Swift’s strength in the top categories.

In addition to being the most nominated artist of the year, SZA was also slated to perform during the broadcast. So were six-time nominees Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, Song of the Year contender Dua Lipa, Afrobeats superstar Burna Boy, country nominee Luke Combs, rap contender Travis Scott and legendary artists Joni Mitchell, Billy Joel and U2. Presenters included Christina Aguilera, last year’s Best New Artist champ Samara Joy, Lenny Kravitz, Maluma, Lionel Richie, Mark Ronson, Meryl Streep, Taylor Tomlinson and Oprah Winfrey.

What did you think of tonight’s show? Follow along below starting at 8:00pm ET (5:00pm PT). Make sure to comment, and join the discussion with your fellow music fans here in our forums.

SEE2024 Gold Derby Music Awards winners: Clean sweep for Taylor Swift

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8:01pm — Dua Lipa serving jungle gym realness to open the show. Good way to start the show, and I’m pretty sure she’s gotten in her cardio for the week. Or month.

8:12pm — Trevor Noah is nothing if not enthusiastic as a host of the Grammys. His approach to the show is as music’s biggest fan. Good-natured to a fault maybe. He’s avoiding poking fun at the attendees, which is certainly going over better than Jo Koy‘s Golden Globes routine, though it is a little better when his barbs have some teeth, like his joke about Spotify ripping off artists instead of TikTok. But a few moments of positivity are clever, like when he announces that Taylor Swift’s arrival has improved the economy of the tables she’s walking by: “Lionel Richie is now Lionel Wealthy.”

8:15pm — BEST POP SOLO PERFORMANCE: Miley Cyrus wins her very first Grammy Award, for her hit “Flowers,” the biggest hit of her career. It spent eight weeks at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100, but she had to face three other number-one hits in the category. Will she win Record of the Year and Song of the Year? Last year’s Pop Solo winner, Adele’s “Easy on Me,” had to settle for just that. But huge hits do often win the top categories.

8:20pm — Luke Combs mouthing the lyrics while Tracy Chapman is singing her parts of “Fast Car” is incredibly loving. You can tell how much he loves every word. It was a joy when this song got a second life through Combs’s cover, especially with how faithful a cover it was. I wish he’d won Best Country Solo Performance for it earlier today because it would have been the first of his career.

8:30pm — BEST MUSICA URBANA ALBUM: Karol G wins for “Mañana Será Bonito,” which was the first Spanish language album by a woman to top the Billboard 200 albums chart. So it was definitely the big fish in a small pond in this category, and it was the strong favorite in our odds. This was the first Grammy of her career.

8:35pm — It takes guts to perform next to a literal dumpster fire, but SZA’s “Snooze” was a beautifully controlled vocal. And then her dramatization of “Kill Bill” did justice to the song and to Tarantino. Kudos to the wire work that makes it look like SZA picked a man up off the ground by his neck. He had it comin’.

8:46pm — Decent bit between Trevor Noah and Billie Eilish and Finneas’s parents asking why they didn’t produce any more Grammy-winning progeny. Also a good joke about the utterly doomed name of the Crypto.com Arena. Leads directly into Eilish and Finneas’s performance of “What Was I Made For?,” which is a subtle, breathy song, hard to pull off in such a large space. But Eilish keeps it intimate and the camera pulls her in close. Whether not it wins more Grammys tonight, she’s making a good case for that Oscar. Eilish is a highly evocative vocalist.

8:55pm — I like the performance intros of the artists talking about their songs and albums. A little insight into the music we’re listening to. I especially appreciate it from Miley Cyrus, who really is in her gives-zero-f’s era. She admitted to performing at the Grammys for the satisfaction of seeing her performance the next morning. She insisted that the audience sing along, and she cried “I just won my first Grammy!” into the lyrics. Her sky-high Tina Turner hair was only slightly distracting. But who am I kidding, it was part of the satisfying drama.

9:03pm — BEST COUNTRY ALBUM: Lainey Wilson wins for “Bell Bottom Country.” This was a bit of a surprise considering that Zach Bryan‘s self-titled album was a much bigger hit and Wilson only had one other nomination this year, not to mention she was snubbed for Best New Artist. But we probably should’ve seen it coming since she has won big at the ACM and CMA Awards, showing how popular she is in the country industry. All-in-all the Grammys spread the wealth in the country field, giving the four awards to four different artists: Chris Stapleton won Best Country Solo Performance and Song, Bryan and Kacey Musgraves won Best Country Suo/Group Performance, and now Wilson takes Best Country Album. I like when awards recognize how much quality material there is.

9:12pm — BEST R&B SONG — SZA wins for “Snooze.” This was a close call as she was up against Record of the Year nominee “On My Mama” by Victoria Monet. And SZA surprisingly lost a couple of her other R&B noms today. But “Snooze” was the biggest hit in this category by a mile, a top-five hit on the Hot 100. And now SZA has three awards on the night. She’s absolutely still in the running for Album of the Year. Though that race still feels like a real toss-up if you ask me. You could make a case for most of the nominees there.

9:20pm — Man, Olivia Rodrigo‘s “Vampire” rocks. Simple, straightforward performance of a really rousing breakup anthem. The blood in the background and smeared on her face was a really nice touch.

9:27pm — U2‘s performance in the Las Vegas really felt like just an ad for the Sphere brought to us by the Las Vegas Tourism Board. It transitioned awkwardly into the presentation of BEST POP VOCAL ALBUM to Taylor Swift for “Midnights.” It’s her lucky 13th Grammy and her second in the category following her victory for “1989.” She used her victory as an opportunity to announce that her next album “The Tortured Poets Department” is coming out in April. Felt like kind of a calculated promotional moment as compared to some of the more spontaneous moments from artists like Miley Cyrus and SZA. Swift is very used to winning these things.

9:41pm — Great decision to have Stevie Wonder sing a virtual duet with Tony Bennett to introduce the In Memoriam segment, but I feel like they’re focusing a little too much on the performances by Wonder and Annie Lennox. Cutting to them is cutting time that could have been devoted to paying tribute to more deceased artists. Though I appreciate Lennox’s call for a ceasefire. Pretty sure that’s the first mention of the crisis I’ve seen at an awards show since last October. It’s a brave stance to take given the backlash some people have faced.

9:50pm — Okay, Jon Batiste just turned this “In Memoriam” segment into a gospel revival and a celebration of life, which felt like a strong, effective choice, even though I still think the focus should be more fully on the late artists and music professionals.

9:56pm — Fantasia Barrino was an inspired choice for the Tina Turner “Proud Mary” tribute. She’s a strong enough vocalist to do Turner justice and also has the unbridled passion and energy to keep up with that song. I like the decision to close the longer-than-expected “In Memoriam” segment — segments, really — with the joy of the music the artists left us with.

10:07pm — However you feel about Jay-Z, I kinda love how he’s throwing shade at the Grammys while receiving a Global Impact Award from the Grammys. He didn’t deny his ambivalence about the awards, which he has boycotted in the past, has won and lost in the past. He pointed out how Beyonce is the most awarded person of all time, so it’s illogical that she has never won Album of the Year. Best part: telling some of the losing artists that they may have been robbed, but also that some of the nominees probably don’t even belong in their categories. Shade, shade, shade.

10:15pm — SONG OF THE YEAR: Billie Eilish and Finneas win for the second time in this category for “What Was I Made For?” They previously collected this prize for “Bad Guy,” Eilish’s first number-one single. They won earlier today for Best Visual Media Song, and it’s been a while since a song from a movie soundtrack won Song of the Year. The last one was “My Heart Will Go On” in 1999. Eilish also becomes the second woman in history to win Song of the Year twice, following Adele.

10:27pm — I’ll admit, I was worried about Joni Mitchell performing at the Grammys, given her health struggles. It’s remarkable how much depth and soul and richness there still is in her voice.

10:41pm — Honestly not sure what to make of that Travis Scott performance. The most dramatic staging of the evening with evocative lighting and fog. It was visually elegant. He worked out some aggression by breaking some folding chairs. No one in the audience died.

10:50pm — Very careful words from Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. addressing the violence in the Middle East, a call to overcome differences while highlighting Palestinian and Israeli musicians playing together. Nice sentiments, but seems more designed not to offend anybody than to actually say something about the events in question.

11:01pm — Vibrant Afrobeats-R&B-hip-hop fusion with Burna Boy, 21 Savage and Brandy. Also, can I have Burna Boy’s jewel-encrusted red coat? Pretty please?

11:03pm — BEST NEW ARTIST — Victoria Monet collects her third Grammy of the day. At the Premiere Ceremony during the afternoon, she claimed Best R&B Album and Best Engineered Album for “Jaguar II.” She kind of ambushed this race. She wasn’t among our top eight predicted nominees, but when she made the cut and earned seven total noms, she shot to the top of our odds. But it’s not too common for R&B female artists to prevail here. The last was Alicia Keys in 2002. She didn’t come out of nowhere, though. She’s been working in the industry as a songwriter nd producer and even earned bids for Record of the Year and Album of the Year for her past work behind the scenes with Ariana Grande. As she said in her speech, this award has been many years in the making.

11:15pm — Meryl Streep wins best presenter of the night for actually funny banter with son-in-law Mark Ronson about the difference between a record, album and song. They present RECORD OF THE YEAR to Miley Cyrus for “Flowers.” This marks a rare occasion when there’s a split between Record and Song of the Year, with “What Was I Made For?” winning Song and losing Record, while “Flowers” wins Record but lost Song. This wasn’t really a surprise, though, as “Flowers” was a big, uplifting hit just like last year’s winner “About Damn Time” by Lizzo. Not for Cyrus’s first wins at these awards.

11:25pm — Billy Joel performed his first new song in years, “Turn the Lights Back On.” And you know it’s good when you find yourself singing the chorus by the end and it’s the first time you’ve heard it … Or so I imagine.

11:27pm — In an emotional presentation, Celine Dion presents ALBUM OF THE YEAR to “Midnights” by Taylor Swift, who makes history as the only artist ever to win this award four times. She previously prevailed for “Fearless,” “1989” and “Folklore,” and she’s not even 35. This turned out exactly like last year when Harry Styles won just two awards: Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year for “Harry’s House.”

11:33pm — The end may have been kind of an anti-climax, but Grammy voters gratifyingly spread the wealth this year. Like last year, every general field award was won by a different artist. Swift won the top award, but didn’t sweep. SZA did well with three victories but there was still room for Coco Jones, PJ Morton and Victoria Monet in the R&B field. If Jay-Z were judging these winners, I’m not sure he’d find much to be outraged over, unless maybe he’s wondering why Swift has won Album of the Year four times compared to Beyonce’s zero … Oh who am I kidding, he’s definitely thinking that.

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