Editor's Note: This article was updated on Feb. 7, 2025 to reflect Jimmy Carter's posthumous win at the 2025 GRAMMYs.
Presidents and politicians aren't the first people usually associated with GRAMMY season, but surprisingly, several of them — and first ladies, too — have added golden gramophones to their collections of awards.
In fact, at the 2025 GRAMMYs, the late Jimmy Carter posthumously won his fourth GRAMMY. And at the 2024 GRAMMYs, former First Lady Michelle Obama claimed her second golden gramophone, for her bestselling memoir, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times.
These back-to-back victories are two of several political GRAMMY wins and nominations that date back to 1965. At the 7th GRAMMY Awards, the late former President John F. Kennedy and former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson — who ran for president twice — each earned nominations for their contributions to The Kennedy Wit, a compilation of Kennedy's most famous and humorous anecdotes. The audio version was nominated for Best Documentary, Spoken Word Or Drama Recording (Other Than Comedy).
Though those nominations didn't turn into wins, there have been a few political figures who have won the coveted trophies. Below, GRAMMY.com salutes the former presidents, their spouses and even some would-be presidents who sit among the ranks of GRAMMY winners.
Jimmy Carter
Leading the pack is the 39th U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, a three-time GRAMMY winner and 10-time nominee in his lifetime, making him the most honored politician in GRAMMY history. His fourth win came just five weeks after his passing at a remarkable 100 years old, posthumously earning a golden gramophone for Last Sundays In Plains: A Centennial Celebration in the Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording Category at the 2025 GRAMMYs. (All of his wins and nominations are in this Category, which was previously known as Best Spoken Word Album.)
The prolific Carter won his first GRAMMY at the 48th ceremony in 2007 for Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (which tied with Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee's Ossie and Ruby). His second and third came in 2016 and 2019, for A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety and Faith: A Journey for All, respectively.
Carter earned his first GRAMMY nomination in 1998, 17 years after leaving office, for the audio adaptation of his 13th book, Living Faith. His other nods came in 1999, 2002, 2008, 2010 and 2015.
Bill & Hillary Rodham Clinton
Former president Bill Clinton earned two terms in 1992 and 1996, but Hillary Rodham Clinton, his first lady, beat him to GRAMMYs glory. Not long after Bill won re-election in 1996, Hillary won her first GRAMMY for It Takes a Village, which won Best Spoken Word Album at the 39th ceremony in 1997. Her album Living History landed a second nomination in the Category in 2004; though she didn't take home the GRAMMY, Bill was a winner that year. He won Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his role in Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Beintus: Wolf Tracks.
The following year, at the 47th GRAMMYs, Bill won in the Best Spoken Word Album Category for his memoir, My Life. Additional nominations followed in 2008 for Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, and in 2013 for Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy, both in the same Category.
The Clinton administration also (sort of) had a claim on Best Spoken Word Album at the 51st GRAMMYs in 2009, thanks to Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood's GRAMMY-winning audiobook reading of the bestseller An Inconvenient Truth, written by Al Gore, who served as vice president under Clinton during both terms.
Barack & Michelle Obama
The Obama family may not have penned as many books as Carter (at least not yet), but collectively, former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle tie him with four GRAMMYs, two apiece.
Barack's two wins are both in the Best Spoken Word Album Category for audio adaptations of two books published before his presidency: the memoir Dreams from My Father in 2006 and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream in 2008. His third nomination in the Category came at the 64th GRAMMY Awards in 2022 for A Promised Land.
Michelle Obama is two for two with her GRAMMY nominations. She first won for her 2018 memoir, Becoming, which took home Best Spoken Word Album at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards in 2020, and four years later, she won Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording for The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. (And before any of her nominations, in 2019, Michelle was part of a girl-powered surprise intro segment alongside Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Jada Pinkett Smith and then-host Alicia Keys.)
Notable Nominations
Thirteen years after John F. Kennedy earned the first presidential GRAMMY nomination, former President Harry S. Truman was nominated for "The Truman Tapes," in the Best Spoken Word Recording Category (which is the same as Kennedy's Best Documentary or Spoken Word Recording (Other Than Comedy) Category, and is now known as the Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording as of press time) in 1978.
Former President Richard Nixon earned a nomination in the same Category the next year, for his televised interviews with journalist David Frost, packaged as The Nixon Interviews With David Frost.
In 2015 — five years before her 2020 presidential run — Sen. Elizabeth Warren earned her first GRAMMY nomination for the adaptation of her bestselling book, A Fighting Chance, in the Best Spoken Word Album Category at the 57th GRAMMY Awards.
U.S. Senator and two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders earned a nomination in the same Category in 2018, for the reading of Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In alongside actor Mark Ruffalo. Like Michelle Obama, he earned his second GRAMMY nomination at the 2024 GRAMMYs, in the same Category as the victorious former first lady (Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording) for his book It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.
With wins at the 2024 and 2025 GRAMMYs, it's clear that, even nearly 60 years on, political figures will continue to be prominent in the GRAMMY sphere.