In a behind-the-scenes sense, it’s a big day for the 2025 Grammy Awards: Today (October 4) marks the opening of the first round of Grammy voting. (Here are some other key dates to keep an eye on.) Right away, some have noticed that a major name is mysteriously missing from the ballot.
Variety reports that per “industry sources,” Zach Bryan’s name is not on “the massive ballot that just went out to Grammy voters.” The publication further relays that a search of the online ballot that’s only available to Recording Academy members reveals “Bryan’s name does not appear among the thousands of contestants whose work has been submitted for Record Of The Year, Album Of The Year, or Song Of The Year.” His albums or songs don’t appear in any rock, country, or Americana categories, either.
Presumably, this means Bryan intentionally did not submit his work for Grammy consideration. It’s not clear why this would be the case, but two potential options are that Bryan decided to boycott the Grammys for some reason, or that he simply doesn’t care about the awards show. There’s also the possibility that there’s no animosity/apathy, that Bryan and/or his label, Warner Records, simply forgot to submit, or missed a submission deadline.
Bryan has yet to offer a public comment about the situation, while Warner has not responded to Variety‘s request for comment. Bryan presumably wouldn’t have a results-based reason to be upset with the Recording Academy, as he just won his first Grammy Award earlier this year, picking up the Best Country Duo/Group Performance award alongside Kacey Musgraves for “I Remember Everything.”
Whatever’s happening here, Bryan certainly isn’t afraid to go against the music industry’s biggest establishments: Early in his rise to mainstream fame, he was famously combative with Ticketmaster, going as far as dropping a live album titled All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.
