Today, we look at how Billie Eilish won a Grammy for Song of the Year in 2026 for a song that was on her 2024 album that was nominated for a Grammy LAST year?
In Pop Culture Questions Answered, I answer whatever questions you folks might have about movies, TV, music or whatever (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brian@poprefs.com).
People were very confused as to how Billie Eilish won Song of the Year for “Wildflowers,” which was a track off of her 2024 album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, despite Hit Me Hard and Soft being nominated for Album of the Year (and the hit song, “Birds of a Feather,” also off that same album, being nominated for Song of the Year) last year.
“Wildflowers” was on the album that was nominated at LAST year’s Grammys, so how could it be nominated for THIS year’s Grammys?
As it turns out, so long as a song is released as a single later on, and released within the eligibility timeline of the FOLLOWING year, it still counts as a separate entity for nominations, and “Wildflowers” wasn’t released as a single until early 2025, while the album came out in May 2024 (the cutoff date for the current Grammys was August 31, 2024 – August 30, 2025).
HOWEVER, there is one major exception. You can only get a Grammy nomination for a song off of an album if the album didn’t win a Grammy Award in the previous year. So had Hit Me Hard and Soft won any Grammys in last year’s Grammys, no song from it would be eligible for this year’s Grammys. However, Hit Me Hard and Soft was shutout last year, so that made “Wildflowers” eligible THIS year, and the Grammy voters obviously love them some Billie Eilish (this is the third Grammy for Song of the Year, the songwriting category, that she and her brother, Finneas, have picked up. Taylor Swift, amazingly enough, has NEVER won Song of the Year).
If anyone else has a pop culture question, drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com!
“Taylor Swift, amazingly enough, has NEVER won Song of the Year”
I’m always amazed that Swift has managed to maintain a career and win any Grammys.