If you were to compile a list of the most frequently asked Grammy-related questions, one of them would surely boil down to a single word: "Why?" Why try to whittle the music industry's entire vast output — across countless genres, by artists from all over the world — down to a handful of industry-appointed "winners"? What's the point?

It's best to think of the Grammy Awards as a three-and-a-half-hour infomercial for the music industry. The performances are there to attract eyeballs while showcasing past, present and future stars; the awards are there to reward excellence, at least on paper; and both exist to help the industry anoint the artists the industry sees as ambassadors, both in the moment and hopefully well into the future. It's fair to question the awards' value in a world rocked by political turmoil and climate disaster. But if you're interested in the music industry — how it sees itself and who it sees as its standard-bearers — the Grammys have a lot to tell you.

Here are five storylines to consider as Sunday's awards approach. The CBS telecast begins at 8 p.m. ET, but remember that the lion's share of the awards — most of the Grammys' 94 categories — will be handed out in a web-streamed Premiere Ceremony that starts four and a half hours earlier.

1. Look to the stars (especially the most-awarded star in Grammy history)

It's tempting — and not necessarily inaccurate — to view this year's Grammys as a demolition-derby-style clash of the titans involving some of the biggest names in pop music.

The leading nominee, with 11 nods, is Beyoncé, who's won the most trophies in Grammy history (32) while never snagging either of the awards' crown jewels: record or album of the year. This year, she's up for both, and Cowboy Carter and its chart-topping single "Texas Hold 'Em" are strong contenders. If you watched the singer's Christmas Day "Beyoncé Bowl" halftime show on Netflix, it was essentially a "For Your Consideration" reel for those prizes. They matter to her — and at this point, she'll be one of the night's biggest stories, whether it ends in triumph or another defeat in the major categories.

Of course, Beyoncé will have to get past some of music's biggest names — including Taylor Swift, who's essentially the Kansas City Chiefs of pop stars at this point. (If you'd like this article to double as a preview of the upcoming Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs are also the Taylor Swift of NFL franchises: inevitable as the tides, mindful of every detail, prone to winning even when most people think they shouldn't.)

Beyoncé and Swift are both up for the night's biggest prizes — album, record and song of the year — but they're not alone on that front. Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are also up for all three, and it's certainly possible that one will end up sweeping if everything breaks a certain way. If that happens, it'll mark a coronation that extends well beyond the Grammys themselves. And, of course, Roan and Carpenter are in position to pull off an even larger and more prestigious potential sweep. Which leads us to…

2. A stacked best new artist field

The Grammys have 94 categories, but the four top fields are album, song and record of the year, plus best new artist. Before this year, only 13 artists had ever been nominated in all four categories the same year, and just two have executed the sweep by winning them all: Christopher Cross in 1981 and Eilish in 2020.

Roan and Carpenter are friends — don't miss Carpenter's cover of Roan's "Good Luck, Babe!" if you've never heard it — but they're on a collision course heading into Sunday. Each would be a heavy favorite for best new artist if she weren't facing off against a star of the other's stature. Both dominated the pop landscape in 2024.

Even then, they're not the only nominees in this category to have scored colossal commercial breakthroughs in recent months. Benson Boone, Shaboozey and Teddy Swims have each had one of the most inescapable hits of the streaming era with "Beautiful Things," "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" and "Lose Control," respectively; all three songs remain in the top 20 many months after they first became hits.

No one else in this category is a slouch, either: Doechii rightly ranks among the fastest-rising stars in hip-hop and RAYE is genre-straddling Grammy catnip who's also nominated for songwriter of the year (she's a dark horse who could surprise people, even in this category), while Khruangbin sells out stadiums, even as the band's decade-spanning catalog calls into question the idea of what constitutes a "new artist."

3. Look for the Grammys to watch their tone

The Grammys have had to adjust to tragedies before, whether it's the postponed-due-to-COVID telecasts of 2021 and 2022 or the 2020 awards being handed out mere hours after Kobe Bryant's death. Every time, the Recording Academy adopts a "the show must go on" mentality and, well, puts on a show, even if it feels obliged to cancel some of the parties that surround the big event, as it did this year.

In light of the LA wildfires' impact on the music industry — and given the significant opportunity for a heavily watched telecast to raise funds for victims — expect a toned-down ceremony that still makes room for moments of pop-star spectacle. It'll be a tricky balancing act, but the Grammys have pulled it off before.

4. If you want to predict a massive, earth-shaking upset, try these on for size

The two top categories — album of the year and record of the year — break down similarly this year: You've got a cluster of contemporary commercial juggernauts facing off against one or two outliers.

In album of the year, six women who've dominated pop music — Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift — are vying for arguably the night's biggest prize. Each has her own constituency, and several have enjoyed monumental Grammy success: Beyoncé is the most decorated Grammy winner in history; Swift has won album of the year four times; Eilish swept the big four categories in 2020, then won record of the year ("Everything I Wanted" in 2021) and song of the year ("What Was I Made For?" in 2024) in the ceremonies since. Carpenter, Charli xcx and Roan all broke through in a massive way last year.

Each of the six powerhouses in this category has a distinct sound, but all traffic in commercial pop music. Then you've got two left-field entries: André 3000, whose instrumental flute odyssey New Blue Sun seems pretty out-there for Grammy voters, and Jacob Collier, who has never so much as cracked the Billboard pop charts. But Collier, who picked up an album of the year nomination for Djesse Vol. 4, has won six Grammys and been nominated 15 times; the Grammys have been sponging what he's spilling ever since he came on the scene as an irrepressibly cheerful prodigy. (There's precedent for this sort of jazz-adjacent upset, too: Remember 2011, when they gave best new artist to Esperanza Spalding over Justin Bieber, Drake, Florence and the Machine and Mumford & Sons?)

A similar vote-splitting dynamic could affect the race for record of the year. Once again, you've got the same six pop-fluent women who round out the album of the year field, but instead of André 3000 and Jacob Collier, you've got two different acts with huge constituencies. Neither has to share a lane, or a voting constituency, with similar stars.

Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" wouldn't be a huge shock here: The track was one of 2024's biggest songs, and its staunchly pro-LA vibes feel timely right now. Then there's The Beatles' "Now and Then." No one's going to confuse the track — which fleshes out a late-'70s John Lennon demo and has been billed as "the last Beatles song" — with, say, "Let It Be." But voters in the Grammys' general fields do skew older, and they've been known to break ties in favor of venerated rock sounds.

Would a record of the year win for The Beatles in 2025 qualify as a gigantic upset? Yeah, kinda. How about an album of the year win for Jacob Collier? That'd be an earth-shaker, especially given how often (and how infamously) Beyoncé has been denied in this category. But neither feels impossible.

5. The performances are a big deal (maybe a bigger deal than the actual awards)

In an era where any given live set could go viral, the stakes might not seem that high for artists who perform on the Grammys. But there are many incentives to do something special: They're performing in front of industry power-brokers. They're being measured against peers at the top of their game. In the streaming era, Grammy performances often directly impact the factors that drive Billboard chart placement — and revenues. And, in a world where streaming services' algorithms feed listeners music they've already sought out, those streams have a way of multiplying themselves.

A few of the major nominees, like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, aren't scheduled to perform this year. Same goes for Kendrick Lamar, who's headlining the Super Bowl halftime show the following weekend. But the confirmed lineup so far contains most of the night's biggest names — and many of them are renowned for their flashy stage presences. Benson Boone and Teddy Swims are sure to bring vein-bulging vocal thunder, though only the former is known for incorporating backflips and rollerblades into his act. Chappell Roan crushed the VMAs and any number of festival gigs. Charli xcx, Doechii, Shakira, Billie Eilish… all of them know how to work a stage. RAYE is teetering on the brink of superstardom, and she's exactly the sort of genre-smashing polymath the Grammys love to showcase.

In other words, if you're prone to lamenting that you can't keep up with who the big pop stars are these days, these three and a half hours can help get you caught up in a big way.

Copyright 2025, NPR