NEW SINCEREST: 2/3/25

The Grammys rarely get Album of the Year right: the most prestigious award of the ceremony, Album of the Year celebrates a complete body of work, selected from a list of ten nominees regardless of genre, geographic location, or gross domestic product (supposedly…). At 2025’s ceremony, the Recording Academy didn’t quite get it right again (the award, in my book, should have gone to Charli xcx’s pop opus BRAT), but it did finally honor Beyoncé for her Black country music manifesto Cowboy Carter, a long awaited crowning after four previous nominations in the category (which, for my word, she should have been awarded for in 2015 for Beyoncé and in 2023 for Renaissance). For this week’s episode, in honor of the 2025 Grammy Awards and Beyoncé's Album of the Year win, The New Sincerest reflects on the past half decade of the biggest award of the ceremony. For each year discussed there are three track selections: one representing the official Album of the Year winner, and a track from two alternate albums from the nominee list that host Connor Ferguson believes would have been the next best (or the better) selection for the award.