With anticipation over who will be honored by receiving the Grammy’s most coveted award of the year, predictions about who will take home the award for Album of the Year have been widely disputed.
Lately, the top two choices of the public seem to be either Kendrick Lamar or Taylor Swift, as Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly“ and Swift’s 1989, have been the two biggest releases of 2015 (Adele’s “25” would’ve probably also been nominated had it been released before the 2016 deadline of Sept. 30.)
Of course, while a long-awaited release seems more likely to be nominated for the honor, no one (outside of “the academy,” that is) really knows what goes into making a nominated album, let alone a winning album. So then the real question shouldn’t be ‘who is going to win Album of the Year,’ but rather why they win. The average person can only look at this question with the perspective of an outsider to the academy. Without knowing how exactly the academy makes their decision, we can only rely on common sense and a list of past winners to lead us toward a more accurate prediction.
It’s quite obvious that the preferences of popular music change from decade to decade, otherwise we’d still be in fringed dressed and suits, doing jazz squares in Jay Gatsby’s backyard.  The sixties saw artists like Frank Sinatra (who won in ’60, ’66, and ’67) and Barbra Streisand, (’64) who took home the coveted trophy for their impressive jazzy and Broadway-inspiring voices. The seventies hailed rock and disco icons like George Harrison (’73) Stevie Wonder (’74-’75, ’77) and Fleetwood Mac. (’78) The preferences only continued to evolve throughout the decades, with pop icons like Michael Jackson (’84) and Lionel Richie (’85) winning in the 80s, while ballad-blasting voices like Whitney Houston (’94) and Celine Dion (’97) dominated the ’90s.
And while the idea of these names being small sounds ridiculous to us now, the reality of each winning artist is that they were the unexpected victor. It seems as though the underdog of each list of nominees within the Album of the Year category has escaped with the golden phonograph in hand; last year’s recipient, Beck, shocked the world with his win over artists like Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Pharrell Williams, and Sam Smith. In 2009, Led Zeppelin veteran Robert Plant and Bluegrass siren Alison Krauss won against Coldplay, Ne-Yo, Radiohead, and Lil Wayne.
So this year, between Taylor Swift (“1989”), The Weekend (“Beauty Behind The Madness”), Alabama Shakes (“Sound & Color”), Chris Stapelton (“Traveller”) and Kendrick Lamar (“To Pimp A Butterfly”), we can only guess who will be crowned champion. Ironically enough, we can assume who the winner will be by looking at who we think will be the least likely to actually win. But, of course, we won’t actually know until the night of the event. 
The Grammy’s will air on Monday, February 15 at 8 p.m.