No, Taylor Swift was not removed from Grammy nominations at Elon Musk’s request
Claim: Taylor Swift was removed from the 2025 Grammy nominations after a request by Elon Musk.
In February and March 2025, rumors that a request from billionaire Elon Musk resulted in pop superstar Taylor Swift’s removal from the list of 2025 Grammy Award nominees swirled on the internet.
Users on social media platforms shared images of Musk and Swift along with captions including, “BREAKING NEWS: Taylor Swift Has Been Officially Removed from The Grammy Nominations Following A Request From Elon Musk To The Organizers.”
However, there was no evidence to support the claim that Musk successfully had Swift removed from the Grammy nominations. As a result, we’ve rated the claim false.
The posts did not specify for which year the Recording Academy, the organization that runs the Grammy Awards, allegedly removed Swift’s nominations. The 2025 Grammy Awards took place on Feb. 2, 2025, days before the claim appeared to have surfaced. Further, although Swift did not win any awards at the ceremony, the official Grammy Awards website still listed Swift’s six nominations for that year, including record of the year, album of the year, song of the year and best music video.
The Recording Academy announced nominations for the 2025 Grammy Awards on Nov. 8, 2024. At the time of this writing, the organization had not yet announced nominations for the 2026 awards.
In addition to the official Grammy website still listing Swift’s name among the 2025 nominees, there was extensive media coverage of the live Grammy Awards, including Swift’s presentation of the award for best country album to winner Beyoncé and footage of Swift enjoying the ceremony from the audience.
Finally, a simple Google search found no credible outlets reporting this claim, which would have been headline news if it were true.
While the claim that Musk managed to get Swift’s Grammy nominations rescinded was false, the Tesla CEO has publicly targeted Swift before.