The fifth time was the charm for Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards.
On Sunday, following four previous losses for album of the year, the singer’s latest LP, “Cowboy Carter,” a country-tinged treatise on genre’s tricky relationship with race, took home the industry’s top trophy. Beyoncé, 43, became just the fourth Black woman to ever win album of the year and the first in more than a quarter of a century, following Lauryn Hill in 1999, Whitney Houston in 1994 and Natalie Cole in 1992.
“It’s been many, many years,” Beyoncé said with a giggle in her acceptance speech, dedicating the win to the Black country singer Linda Martell, who appears on “Cowboy Carter” to discuss the complexity of genre.
“Cowboy Carter” topped a crowded field that also included albums by André 3000, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Jacob Collier, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift, who holds the record for album of the year wins, with four.
The win, one of three on the night, brought Beyoncé’s career Grammy total to 35, the most by any artist, although she had previously won just once in the big four categories of album, song and record of the year, and best new artist: “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” took home song of the year in 2010.
For years, Beyoncé’s lack of a major victory at the Grammys has dominated conversation around the show, standing in for its fraught relationship with awarding female musicians, especially Black ones, in top categories. Past achievements like the audacious visual album “Beyoncé,” the personal opus “Lemonade” and the dance-music tribute “Renaissance” had been thought of as front-runners before losing to albums by Beck, Adele and Harry Styles. (Swift’s second album, “Fearless,” also defeated Beyoncé’s “I Am … Sasha Fierce” in 2010.)
At the awards last year, Beyoncé’s husband, the rapper Jay-Z, delivered a speech criticizing the show for its snubs of his wife and others while accepting a lifetime achievement award. “Even by your own metrics it doesn’t work,” he said. “We want you to get it right — at least get it close to right.”
Pictured onscreen in the audience after Beyoncé’s breakthrough win, Jay-Z and Swift shared a toast.
