{"id":619226,"date":"2026-10-03T07:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T07:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/619226\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T07:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T07:30:20","slug":"producer-of-the-year-non-classical-grammy-names-to-watch-in-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/619226\/","title":{"rendered":"Producer of the Year, Non-Classical Grammy: Names to Watch in 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt doesn\u2019t get the hype of artist-led categories, but for pop fans who love the liner notes, producer of the year, non-classical is one of the Grammys<\/a>\u2019 most perennially fascinating competitions. These five rising, behind-the-scenes maestros have worked on major hits for such likely 2027 contenders as Noah Kahan, Ariana Grande and Rosal\u00eda \u2014 and could be first-time nominees in the category.<\/p>\n

\t\tNoah Goldstein\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lowdown: Goldstein is certainly no stranger to the Grammys, with wins in the best rap album (Kanye West\u2019s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 2012) and best Latin rock or alternative album (Rosal\u00eda\u2019s Motomami, 2023) categories. Those victories bookended credits on Billboard 200<\/a>-\u00adtopping projects by The Weeknd (Beauty Behind the Madness), Frank Ocean (Blonde) and Drake (More Life), among many other big names.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Case For 2027: Goldstein\u2019s Rosal\u00eda partnership remained fruitful with the release of her 2025 album, LUX \u2014 he\u2019s one of two producers<\/a> (along with Dylan Wiggins) credited on every track. The multilingual set, which debuted at No.\u00a04 on the Billboard\u00a0200, drew rapturous reviews from all corners of the musical world, with particular praise for its gorgeously ornate, genre- and culture-blending, alternately minimal and maximal soundscapes.<\/p>\n

\t\tIlya\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lowdown: Iran-born, Sweden-based Ilya Salmanzadeh has been a top 40 force since he first earned writer and producer credits on mid-2010s Billboard Hot 100<\/a> top five hits by Taylor Swift (\u201cBad Blood\u201d), Ellie Goulding (\u201cLove Me Like You Do\u201d) and Ariana Grande (\u201cProblem\u201d). But while he\u2019s worked with many of pop\u2019s biggest modern stars, his presence on their hits has often been overshadowed within their credits by big-name co-writers and co-producers, particularly his longtime collaborator Max Martin.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Case For 2027: Ilya is a trusted artistic partner of Grande\u2019s dating back to 2014, but he shouldered more of the creative load than ever for the chilly sonics on her Billboard 200-\u00adtopping July album, Petal, as her lone cowriter and coproducer on nine of its 12 tracks (with Martin also credited on the remaining three). He also served as one of the primary writer-producers on late-2025 sets by veteran pop stars Ed Sheeran (Play) and Khalid (After the Sun Goes Down).<\/p>\n

\t\tMargo XS\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lowdown: Margo XS has been one of the pop underground\u2019s hottest producers for years now, providing cutting-edge sonics for cult favorites like Harmony Tividad, Alice Longyu Gao and Terror Jr. She leveled up in 2025 with her work on a series of singles for alt-pop star Kim Petras and on Zara Larsson\u2019s career-reinventing Midnight Sun, even earning a best dance pop recording Grammy nomination last year for the latter\u2019s title track.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Case For 2027: Her work with Petras and Larsson continues to pay dividends. Margo produced many of the highlights on the former\u2019s well-received May release, Detour, and continued to bask in Midnight Sun\u2019s extended daylight on that set\u2019s much-anticipated Girls Trip remix album, where she was also credited as a featured artist on the remix to \u201cPretty Ugly\u201d alongside JT. If she\u2019s nominated, Margo XS would be the third woman recognized in the category in the past 20 years, following Linda Perry and Alissia.<\/p>\n

\t\tZach Nahome\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lowdown: The British writer-producer has built up an impressive and diverse list of U.K. collaborators over the past five years, including Slowthai, PinkPantheress and Bakar. But Nahome became globally unignorable in 2026 after linking up with one of the biggest breakout stars in recent years, Olivia Dean.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Case For 2027: Nahome has production credits on all 12 of the tracks on Dean\u2019s immaculate 2025 album, The Art of Loving \u2014 a No. 3-peaking Billboard 200 album still in the chart\u2019s top 10 nearly a year later \u2014 including its pair of long-running Hot 100 top 10 hits, the irresistible \u201cMan I Need\u201d and \u201cSo Easy (To Fall in Love).\u201d He also has a credit on Justin Bieber\u2019s SWAG II (the extended late-2025 reissue of the singer\u2019s SWAG), on the Bakar-\u00adfeaturing \u201cDon\u2019t Wanna.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tGabe Simon\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lowdown: First breaking into the music industry as the co-\u00adfounder of buzzy early-2010s alt-rock outfit Kopecky, Simon pivoted to writing and producing for big-name artists. While he placed songs on albums by pop stars like Dua Lipa (\u201cBegging\u201d) and Lana Del Rey (\u201cBlue Bannisters\u201d) over the last decade, his level-up moment came in 2022 alongside alt-folk singer-songwriter Noah Kahan, co-producing the entirety of Kahan\u2019s No.\u00a02-peaking Billboard\u00a0200 breakthrough set, Stick Season \u2014 including its Hot\u00a0100 top\u00a010 title track.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Case For 2027: While Stick Season made Kahan a Grammy best new artist nominee in 2024, its follow-up, this year\u2019s The Great Divide \u2014 co-produced by Simon and Aaron Dessner, with a sound engineered to fill the stadiums Kahan\u2019s now playing \u2014 confirmed him as a superstar, debuting atop the Billboard\u00a0200 with the best first-week numbers of any rock album in the streaming era. Simon also earned credits on a number of 2026 singles released by country rocker Koe Wetzel, including \u201cJaded,\u201d his top\u00a020 Hot\u00a0100 hit team-up with Ella Langley.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appears in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It doesn\u2019t get the hype of artist-led categories, but for pop fans who love the liner notes, producer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10779,156,21726,4974,157,3296,111,139,69,60269],"class_list":["post-619226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-awards","tag-entertainment","tag-grammys","tag-magazine","tag-music","tag-music-news","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-producers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}