Grammy Noms Loom: Will Producers Behind Hits for Ariana Grande, Noah Kahan, and Rosalía Be Recognized?

It doesn’t 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’ 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 Rosalía — and could be first-time nominees in the category.

Noah Goldstein

The Lowdown: Goldstein is certainly no stranger to the Grammys, with wins in the best rap album (Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy , 2012) and best Latin rock or alternative album (Rosalía’s Motomami , 2023) categories. Those victories bookended credits on Billboard 200 -­topping projects by The Weeknd ( Beauty Behind the Madness ), Frank Ocean ( Blonde ) and Drake ( More Life ), among many other big names.

The Case For 2027: Goldstein’s Rosalía partnership remained fruitful with the release of her 2025 album, LUX — he’s one of two producers (along with Dylan Wiggins) credited on every track. The multilingual set, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, 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.

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Ilya

The 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 top five hits by Taylor Swift (“Bad Blood”), Ellie Goulding (“Love Me Like You Do”) and Ariana Grande (“Problem”). But while he’s worked with many of pop’s 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.

The Case For 2027: Ilya is a trusted artistic partner of Grande’s dating back to 2014, but he shouldered more of the creative load than ever for the chilly sonics on her Billboard 200-­topping 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 ).

Margo XS

The Lowdown: Margo XS has been one of the pop underground’s 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’s career-reinventing Midnight Sun , even earning a best dance pop recording Grammy nomination last year for the latter’s title track.

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

Zach Nahome

The 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.

The Case For 2027: Nahome has production credits on all 12 of the tracks on Dean’s immaculate 2025 album, The Art of Loving — a No. 3-peaking Billboard 200 album still in the chart’s top 10 nearly a year later — including its pair of long-running Hot 100 top 10 hits, the irresistible “Man I Need” and “So Easy (To Fall in Love).” He also has a credit on Justin Bieber’s SWAG II (the extended late-2025 reissue of the singer’s SWAG ), on the Bakar-­featuring “Don’t Wanna.”

Gabe Simon

The Lowdown: First breaking into the music industry as the co-­founder 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 (“Begging”) and Lana Del Rey (“Blue Bannisters”) over the last decade, his level-up moment came in 2022 alongside alt-folk singer-songwriter Noah Kahan, co-producing the entirety of Kahan’s No. 2-peaking Billboard 200 breakthrough set, Stick Season — including its Hot 100 top 10 title track.

The Case For 2027: While Stick Season made Kahan a Grammy best new artist nominee in 2024, its follow-up, this year’s The Great Divide — co-produced by Simon and Aaron Dessner, with a sound engineered to fill the stadiums Kahan’s now playing — confirmed him as a superstar, debuting atop the Billboard 200 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 “Jaded,” his top 20 Hot 100 hit team-up with Ella Langley.

This story appears in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/producer-of-the-year-non-classical-grammys-predictions-1236352006/)._