By Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times (TNS) LOS ANGELES — A decade and a half ago, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift went head to head for album of the year at the 52nd Grammy Awards in January 2010. It was each woman’s first time competing for the Grammys’ most prestigious prize — the one that embodies the Recording Academy’s closely held ideas about craftsmanship and tradition — and as they waited for Carlos Santana to call out the winner’s name, both wore expressions of nervous expectation. Swift, then 20, took album of the year that night with her sophomore LP, the 10-times-platinum “ Fearless ” — in the process becoming the youngest person in Grammys history to carry the category.
(Billie Eilish set a new record when she won at age 18 in 2020.) Since then, Swift has won the academy’s flagship award three more times, including earlier this year, when her victory with “ Midnights ” broke a tie with Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder to make her the first artist to collect four album of the year trophies. Beyoncé, meanwhile, lost album of the year three more times — a vexing outcome for music’s most intellectually ambitious superstar.
Now, for the first time since 2010, these era-defining giants are set to vie for album of the year again, Swift with “ The Tortured Poets Department ” and Beyoncé with “ Cowboy Carter ,” when nominations for the 67th Grammys are revealed on Nov. 8. Not only that, but Swift’s “Fortnight” and Beyonce.