Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, and Bucks County’s Sabrina Carpenter: Who’s taking the Grammy home?

Will Beyoncé finally take home the one Grammy that has eluded her? Can Taylor Swift win yet again and add to her already record album of the year total? Or will Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, or Bucks County’s own Sabrina Carpenter be the one to spoil the Cowboy Carter party?

These questions and more will be answered when the Grammy Awards air on Sunday night at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+ from the crypto.com arena in Los Angeles. The show, again hosted by Trevor Noah, will celebrate “music’s biggest night” while also mourning the devastating loss caused by LA’s wildfires this winter.

Competition for the high profile awards will be a battle between the women who dominated pop music in 2024. In a Bucks vs. Berks County faceoff, Quakertown’s Carpenter is one of only two artists represented in all four major categories (along with Roan), and has a total of six nominations, one less than the Wyomissing, Pa.-raised Swift.

Other Philly-connected nominees include pianist Orrin Evans, up for best large jazz ensemble album category for his Captain Black Big Band project Walk a Mile in My Shoe and University of Pennsylvania grad John Legend, who has three opportunities to add to his 12 Grammys, with two nods for his children’s album My Favorite Dream.

Cheltenham native jazz trumpeter Randy Brecker is also nominated, as is Lancaster raised singer-songwriter Madi Diaz. Classical contenders include Philadelphians Karen Slack and Michelle Cann for best solo vocal for Beyond the Years, an album of unpublished works by Florence Price.

The Crossing choir, with conductor Donald Nally, and vibraphone player Dan Schwartz, is up for best chorale performance. Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Bradley Cooper are up for best soundtrack for visual media for Maestro, and Nézet-Séguin has two nods in the best opera category for his work with the Metropolitan Opera and Chorus.

The vast majority of the awards in the 94 Grammy categories — such as best audio book narration and storytelling recording, in which late President Jimmy Carter is a sure winner — will be given out in a pre-telecast ceremony from LA’s Nokia Theatre. Tune in at 3:30 p.m. on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel to watch that.

» READ MORE: Philly’s Orrin Evans is up for a Grammy for ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoe’

Also, the Grammys have become the place to tease or announce new projects: Last year, Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department at the ceremony, and Beyoncé hinted at Cowboy Carter’s existence by wearing a white Stetson hat. What better time for her to announce a new tour than after a big Grammy win?

Many of these categories feel more wide open to anyone winning than anytime in recent memory. But here goes with the fearless prognosticating.

André 3000, New Blue Sun; Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter; Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet; Charli XCX, Brat; Jacob Collier, Djesse Vol. 4; Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft; Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess; Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department.

Will win: Beyoncé. She has to, this time. Doesn’t she? Beyoncé’s 99 career noms are the most ever, and she also has more than anybody else this year, with 11. Her 32 wins also top the list, besting Hungarian British conductor Sir George Solti’s 31.

But the awards show narrative that follows Beyoncé around is about her perceived snubs, like when Kanye West jumped on stage to interrupt Swift at the 2009 VMAs for beating out Beyoncé for best female video, or when Beck’s Morning Phase bested Beyoncé for an album of the year Grammy in 2015.

So this is yet another opportunity for justice to be served, albeit for an album that doesn’t stand with her very best. (That’s also true — as even Swifties might admit, if sworn under oath — of The Tortured Poets Department.)

There’s also plenty of healthy competition, with Eilish, who is also a Grammy favorite, and her Hit Me Hard and Soft is peak Billie. I could even envision a shocking upset in favor of Collier, the British polymath whose musicality Grammy voters undoubtedly hold in high esteem. But I’m calling this big kahuna — and a best country album win to boot — for Beyoncé.

Should win: Charli XCX. The Brit songwriter-producer’s Brat was innovative, ridiculously fun, and zeitgeist-defining for an entire slime green summer.

The Beatles, “Now and Then”; Beyoncé, “Texas Hold ‘Em”; Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”; Charli XCX, “360″; Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather”; Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”; Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!”; Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone, “Fortnight.”

Will win: I want to say Eilish for “Birds of a Feather,” which is as inviting a single as she’s ever released. (Though HMHAS’s “Lunch” is also tasty.) But an opportunity to call up Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — who never won record of the year when the Beatles were together — will be too much for the Grammys to resist. Even for as slight of a semi-charming AI-assisted concoction as “Now and Then.”

Should win: “Espresso.” If not “Birds of a Feather,” then Carpenter’s witty throwback to early 1980s pop-R&B, which was a frothy delight that lifted her to household-name status. Make mine a macchiato, please!

Beyoncé, “Texas Hold ‘Em”; Sabrina Carpenter, “Please Please Please”; Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather”; Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile”; Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”; Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!”; Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”; Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone, “Fortnight.”

Will Win: “Not Like Us.” This Grammy awards the songwriter, or songwriters. And the big pop hits on which the Grammy confers honors of excellence are almost always written by committee. “Texas Hold ‘Em” credits seven writers; “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which has grown less ingratiating as it’s gotten more ubiquitous, credits six; and “Die With A Smile,” the smash hit from Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, who announced her new album Mayhem this week, has five.

“Not Like Us,” by contrast, credits only one: Kendrick Lamar. And the Super Bowl LIX headliner wrote it fast, seemingly: The dis track extraordinaire which put an end to his one-sided rap battle with Drake was released less than a day after his previous salvo, “Meet The Grahams.”

Should win: “Not Like Us.” Among the competition, another deserved shout goes to Carpenter for landing a second song in the major category running with the fetching “Please Please Please,” which like “Espresso” and Carpenter’s entire Short n’ Sweet album, was written with Amy Allen, who’s nominated in the separate songwriter of the year category.

Benson Boone, Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii, Khruangbin, Raye, Chappell Roan, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims.

Will win: Chappell Roan. This category is always the target of “How clueless are the Grammys?” barbs. Not because the artists are undeserving, but because they’re so often not new. It’s really for artists who raised their profile in the last year, to the extent that Grammy voters have suddenly woken up to who they are.

When Carpenter got word she was nominated, the Bucks County singer who released the first of her six albums in 2015, quipped, “I’m best old artist. I been here.” Psychedelic funk trio Khruangbin also has a decade-long career.

Roan — self-described as “Your favorite artist’s favorite artist” — is the likely winner. She seemed to come out of nowhere this year, though she too paid her dues. Along with Carpenter, British songwriter Raye has an outside shot: She’s also nominated for songwriter of the year. But Roan has star quality to burn, and “Good Luck, Babe!” is irresistibly catchy.

Should win: Doechii. The Florida rapper born Jaylah Hickmon raised the profile of her top shelf Alligator Bites Never Heal mixtape with late 2024 appearances on NPR’s Tiny Desk and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that put her dazzling talent and theatrical flair on display, but she probably doesn’t have the name recognition to take home the trophy.