Beyonce

That prize went to Harry Styles for his album Harry's House. The fact that Recording Academy voters shut Beyonce out of a major category — and that Styles beat ...

[acknowledged the madness](https://www.thecut.com/2017/02/adele-thanks-beyonc-in-grammys-speech.html) of Beyoncé losing in her acceptance speech. But somehow, once again, she [was snubbed](https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/best-moments-2023-grammys-recap.html) of the Album of the Year award. [Beyoncé made history](https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/beyonce-grammys-2023.html) as the artist with the most Grammys ever when she won four awards for Renaissance — for Best Dance/Electronic Recording, Best Traditional R&B Performance, Best Dance Recording, and Best Dance and Electronic Album.

Two categories into last night's Grammy Awards broadcast, Beyoncé found herself once again achieving an awkward status within the universe of the Recording ...

[Bonnie Raitt](https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/a-conversation-with-bonnie-raitt-plus-public-enemys-chuck-d) took home Song of the Year, for “Just Like That,” presented by Jill Biden, and Lizzo took home Record of the Year. “You clearly are the artist of our lives.” [Harry Styles](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/notes-on-hollywood/is-harry-styles-a-movie-star) looked a bit stunned as he accepted the night’s final award, for Album of the Year, for “Harry’s House.” “I think, on nights like tonight, it’s obviously so important for us to remember there’s no such thing as ‘best in music,’ ” he said. The ‘ [Lemonade](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/beyonces-lemonade)’ album was so monumental.” Song for “Cuff It,” a highlight from her 2022 album, “ [Renaissance](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/beyonces-renaissance-shocks-some-life-into-a-culture-gone-inert),” she tied with the conductor Georg Solti for the highest number of Grammy wins. When [Adele](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/adele) won Album of the Year over Beyoncé, in 2017, there was such a sense of cosmic injustice that Adele herself could not bear the result. Like Adele, Lizzo was compelled to use the end of her stage time to state the obvious: “Thank you so much,” she told Beyoncé. Bad Bunny—who won in the Música Urbana Album category but was otherwise snubbed, despite his global dominance—kicked off the show with an electrifying tribute to historical Latin genres, offering up a maximalist version of his merengue-minded single, “Después de la Playa.” It was such a dynamic performance that This was the overt story line of the evening, but the louder subtext was the question of whether the Recording Academy was finally prepared to give Beyoncé the major awards. When the performance wrapped, the cameras found Jay-Z, who was shooting a finger gun in ecstatic celebration. It was the sort of thing that could have come off like a PowerPoint presentation. [Trevor Noah](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/how-the-daily-show-squandered-the-opportunity-that-was-trevor-noah), worked overtime this year to remind the audience of the Grammys’ respect for her towering greatness, and the historic nature of the evening. [Beyoncé](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/beyonce) found herself once again achieving an awkward status within the universe of the Recording Academy.

Beyonce breaks the record for most career Grammy wins. During the music awards show Sunday night, the pop star added four new Grammys, bringing her lifetime ...

Sam Smith and Kim Petras won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/ Group Performance for their song Unholy. Blues singer Bonnie Raitt won the award for Song of the Year for Just Like That, a single about organ donation. In other categories, Bad Bunny took home the award for Best Música Urbana Album for Un Verano Sin Ti. Or you may create one on the Disqus system. During the show, Beyoncé was nominated for a Grammy for Album of the Year for her latest work, Renaissance. All of you are so inspiring to me." Morale & the Big Steppers. "You clearly are the artist of our lives," Lizzo told the singer. Styles took home the Album of the Year award for Harry’s House, and also won two other Grammys. She noted a time she missed school in fifth grade to see Beyoncé perform in concert. She dedicated the award to Prince, saying the late artist had a big influence on her to make positive music. This broke the old record held by music conductor Georg Solti.

Beyoncé lost Album of the Year for Renaissance at the Grammys, for a fourth time, to Harry Styles's album Harry's House. Why did Harry Styles win the top ...

In [the new Songwriter of the Year award](https://www.vulture.com/2022/11/songwriter-of-the-year-grammy-why-it-matters.html), two of the five nominees had cuts on Styles’s album, including the eventual winner, Tobias Jesso Jr. (It’s a little surprising “As It Was” didn’t earn any hardware, but the wins for Harry’s House seem to be recognition of the album as a body of hits.) After the Academy was criticized for giving Jon Batiste’s We Are, an album without a single top-40 hit, AOTY last year, Styles’s project gave them the opportunity to be on the pulse, at no expense of its perspective. [Shania Twain](https://www.vulture.com/2022/04/harry-styles-late-night-talking-boyfriends-shania-twain-coachella.html)) and present ( [Lizzo](https://www.vulture.com/2022/04/harry-styles-lizzo-i-will-survive-coachella-surprise-guest.html)). As it faded out, Styles and his team teed up hits-in-waiting “Late Night Talking” and “Music for A Sushi Restaurant,” both of which hit the top ten. Styles had a hold on the charts as well, with “As It Was” logging a record five separate runs atop the Hot 100, from its No. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, or Lizzo stole votes from her, why didn’t the same happen to Styles with ABBA, Adele, or Coldplay?) It also feels beside the point to argue whether Styles deserved AOTY over Beyoncé — [we’ve done that with her past two snubs for Beyoncé and Lemonade](https://www.vulture.com/2017/02/what-more-does-beyonc-have-to-do-to-win-album-of-the-year.html), and the answer remains a resounding yes. Beyoncé, on the other hand, added a fourth snub for the top honor to her career, this time for [Renaissance](https://www.vulture.com/2022/08/beyonce-renaissance-review.html), a spectacular, holistic project celebrating Blackness and queerness that [many critics](https://www.vulture.com/article/best-albums-2022.html) had already declared the record of 2022. Then when the record came out in May — logging over a half-million units, the second biggest week of the year behind Taylor Swift’s debut for Midnights — Styles hit the road. [took Best New Artist](https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/grammys-2023-samara-joy-best-new-artist.html) (the second jazz BNA win in less than 15 years, if you can believe it). [On Sunday evening](https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/grammys-2023-recap-best-worst-performances-winners.html), it was a different British pop star who stood between her and her first Grammy for Album of the Year: Harry Styles. Anyone other than Bey winning would’ve been met with some level of vitriol — especially after the Grammys spent the entire night hyping AOTY, and especially after [she became ](https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/beyonce-most-grammy-awards-history.html)the winningest artist in the Recording Academy’s history earlier in the ceremony. Styles won on his first AOTY nomination, for his third (solo) album [Harry’s House](https://www.vulture.com/2022/05/harry-styles-harrys-house-album-review.html), a pleasant but too-comfortable set of songs influenced by ‘80s synthpop and classic rock.

Racism, sexism, fuddy-duddyism: They're all reasons why the winningest artist in Grammy history lost album of the year yet again, this time to Harry Styles.

Because she gathers so many collaborators to help execute her plans, voters seem stubbornly unwilling to accept Beyoncé as the auteur in control of her music — a vexing if hardly novel problem running along both race and gender lines. But if she doesn’t need the Grammys, the Grammys need her: Overnight ratings for Sunday’s telecast were up 30% from 2022, a jump attributable at least in part to the suspense surrounding Beyoncé’s opportunity to break the all-time record. Nor do a growing number of intrepid Black artists — Drake, Frank Ocean and the Weeknd among them — who’ve decided the Grammys’ values don’t align with theirs. But “to ensure music creators are voting in the categories in which they are most knowledgeable and qualified,” as the academy rules put it, members can vote on only 10 of the dozens of more specific awards (such as R&B performance), and all 10 of those must be within no more than three genres. After all, Beyonce’s latest loss comes amid a larger historical context, which is that a mere three Black women — Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston and Lauryn Hill — have won album of the year in the Grammys’ 65 years. Lose the trailblazers and you risk losing those who come behind them. All 11,000 or so of the academy’s voting members are allowed to vote in the Grammys’ four general categories of album, record and song of the year and best new artist. This explains the cognitive dissonance stemming from the fact that Beyoncé is both the most-awarded artist in Grammys history and a trendsetter who keeps getting robbed. That’s a clear distortion of Black women’s importance in pop music that undermines the Grammys’ role as a record-keeping enterprise. But with its intricate weave of samples and interpolations, it’s also structurally daring in a way that obviously triggered the academy’s suspicions about “real music” — suspicions foreshadowed in the Grammys’ pretelevised ceremony when Beyoncé’s longtime collaborator In fact, of the 32 Grammys that Beyoncé has collected over the last two decades, only one — one! [Beyoncé lost the award for album of the year](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-02-02/grammys-2023-beyonce-renaissance-album-of-the-year) to “Harry’s House” by Harry Styles.

February 6, 2023 4:58 p.m.. Beyoncé accepts the Best Dance ...

It’s not [Messi](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lionel-Messi). It’s [Beyoncé](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beyonce).” It’s not [Jordan](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Jordan). [acceptance speech](https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a42764558/beyonce-award-acceptance-speech-grammys-2023/). It’s not [LeBron](https://www.britannica.com/biography/LeBron-James). It’s not [Tom Brady](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tom-Brady). [accused of racial discrimination](https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/09/media/grammys-diversity/index.html), particularly towards Black artists. [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/arts/music/grammy-awards-beyonce-harry-styles.html)’ Ben Sisario. Since her first nomination in 2000, her notable wins have included Song of the Year for 2008’s “ [Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)](https://open.spotify.com/track/5R9a4t5t5O0IsznsrKPVro?autoplay=true)” and Best Music Film for 2019’s [Homecoming](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10147546/). She thanked her family, including her late [uncle Johnny](https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/beyonce-renaissance-uncle-johnny), who introduced her to house music and queer culture. During the pre-show, the album’s number-one single “ [Break My Soul](https://open.spotify.com/track/53wEJEYmRgvpAxM0JUgM95?autoplay=true)” took home the award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording, and “ [Plastic Off the Sofa](https://open.spotify.com/track/6ufcuVInt0ocHrUimDjGlb?autoplay=true)” won as Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance. [Trevor Noah](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Trevor-Noah) declared at the 65th annual [Grammy Awards](https://www.grammy.com/) last night.

Beyoncé became the Grammys GOAT but Harry Styles pulled off an album of the year win. That means it was more of the same on "music's biggest night."

And while “crowded and unfun” doesn’t have the same ring as “music’s biggest night,” it certainly rings more true. And while many have criticized the Grammys for failing to properly recognize rap music over the years, the show’s organizers tried to make amends by booking a sprawling performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with rap icons LL Cool J and Questlove presiding over a posse cut for the ages — a medley that included Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, Too Short, Big Boi, Method Man, Lil Baby, Scarface, Salt N Pepa and many more. So if we take “best” out of the equation, Beyoncé’s consolation prize was “most,” and when she won best electronic/dance album for her gorgeous, disco-infused “Renaissance,” she instantly became the biggest Grammy winner of all time with 32 golden gramophones to her name. As for Styles, his big performance was cluttered with dancers dressed like normies, perhaps to make his tinsel-shag jumpsuit look extra fabulous, but who ultimately made the whole thing feel crowded and unfun. Bad Bunny, whose “Un Verano Sin Ti” was nominated for album of the year, seemed entirely up to the task, opening the show with a blitz of high-spirited merengue rhythms that instantly lifted everyone out of their seats, (including Swift who, at this point, might just attend awards shows for the dancing). “There is no such thing as ‘best’ in music,” Styles said from the stage, cradling his new trophy, exuding a humility that felt as genuine as his statement felt factual.