2025 Grammy predictions: Record of the Year

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David Becker/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Who will win Record of the Year at the 2025 Grammys? This award goes to the artists, producers, and engineers of the year’s best single. That’s where this differs from Song of the Year, which goes specifically to songwriters. Though this award is not technically a popularity contest, commercial success is typically a major factor, like Miley Cyrus‘s reigning champion “Flowers,” a blockbuster that spent several weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. So will the next winner be a big hit as well? Scroll down to see our official racetrack odds, which are calculated based on the combined predictions of Gold Derby users. The odds are always changing, so we’ll be updating this list as the season progresses.

For most of history there were five Grammy nominees in the Record of the Year category, same as there were for Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. From 2019 to 2021 there were eight Grammy slots in those races. In 2022 the academy further expanded that to 10 slots. Then in 2024 that number went back down to eight. And that’s not the only major change that has come to the Grammys in recent years. In 2021 they also got rid of nomination review committees in most categories. Those panels made the final decisions about who made the ultimate nominations list in the general field and in many genre categories, but the committees were anonymous and thus unaccountable, leading to controversy, especially after The Weeknd was shut out of the nominations and vowed to boycott the awards. In 2024 the Grammys decided to add two categories to the general field: Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, and Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical.

Some of the most noteworthy winners in this category over the years have included “Moon River” by Henry Mancini, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” by Tony Bennett, “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra, “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel, “What’s Love Got to Do with It” by Tina Turner, “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele, and “This is America” by Childish Gambino. The Record of the Year champs in the last decade have all been top-10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Will that trend continue in 2025?

UPDATED: July 2, 2024