Which artist has won the most ‘Record of the Year’ Grammys?

(Credits: Far Out / Recording Academy)

Fri 7 November 2025 2:30, UK

I will admit that, despite being a music journalist, my knowledge or in fact, my interest in the Grammys is relatively scratchy.

Because in the modern day, I truly believe a Grammy Award means nothing in relation to the merit of the music. It is but another, if not the biggest, exercise in self-aggrandising backslapping that takes place in entertainment. The music has become far less important than the exposure the evening provides, and so, I can firmly state that the awards bear no influence over my listening habits.

Let’s take the rock nominations for the 2024 awards. The Rolling Stones continued to milk the world’s insatiable appetite for nostalgia by taking home the ‘Best Rock Album’, ahead of more relevant nominees Fontaines DC, Idles and countless others who were unsurprisingly overlooked by the powers that be.

Ten years before that, perhaps the biggest musical robbery of all took place at the Grammys. Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, which stakes a fair claim at being considered one of the greatest albums of all time, lost out on ‘Best Album’ to Taylor Swift’s 1989. 

Now, it would be far too easy to adopt a stance of obnoxiousness and claim a bubblegum pop record has no place winning the award. But that, however, simply isn’t true. Swift’s work and 1989 has just as much validity as anything we’re quick to label as high-brow and should be judged through the lens of the genre it represents.

So Taylor Swift had nothing to do with Lamar’s snub being shocking. It was shocking because of how glaringly obvious the album was as a winner, and sadly symptomatic of the ceremony’s misunderstanding of rap as a credible musical genre. Its bias acts a representative microcosm of American culture, where the system is designed against urban subcultures who will never be fairly recognised despite their merit.

Lamar’s track ‘Alright’ was also beaten to ‘Record of the Year’ by Ed Sheeran, who won it for ‘Thinking Out Loud’, which ultimately meant the greatest album of the 21st century left its annual award show with just one trophy: ‘Best Rap Album’. 

So forgive me if I’ve lost faith in The Grammys. But, for me to try and salvage it back, it’s worth looking back through history and finding out where it turned. At what point did these snubs become regular, or perhaps more importantly, who has been dominating?

So, who has won the most ‘Record of the Year’ Grammys?

Whenever you do any research into the Grammys and its records, one name seems to be at the forefront of the discourse: Beyoncé. She holds the record for the most Grammy wins of all time and seems to be quietly assumed as the queen of the award ceremony. 

But, she only has one ‘Best Song’ to her name, for her 2010 track ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’. But the rest of her awards have come in other categories, as she hasn’t yet made it to the double winners club in this category.

So far, that exclusive club is populated by Billie Eilish, Adele, U2, Eric Clapton, Bette Midler and Roberta Flack and Barbara Streisand, who share the combined lead of ‘Record of the Year’ wins. Thankfully for my own sanity, Kendrick Lamar bagged his first win this year for ‘Not Like Us’.

Still, it was a decade too late.

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