“I Am … Sasha Fierce” losing to Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” — plausible. “Beyoncé” losing to Beck’s “Morning Phase” — laughable. “Lemonade” losing to Adele’s “25” — teachable. “Renaissance” losing to Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” — risible.
Four times, Beyoncé was nominated for album of the year at the Grammys, and four times, she came up short. Given that she is the most nominated artist in Grammy history, and also the winningest, the shutout has been notable and borderline inexplicable.
And so some trepidation hovered over the 67th annual Grammys on Sunday night, where she was, for the fifth time, up for album of the year.
This time, though, she won. And her victory — for “Cowboy Carter,” an album of reimagined American roots music, centered through the lens of Black participation and innovation — was so welcome that even her competitors appeared relieved when her name was announced. Swift, one of the losers, clinked champagne flutes with Jay-Z, Beyoncé’s husband: two people who almost certainly didn’t want to have to navigate a fifth Beyoncé loss.
In order to fully assess the Grammys’ earlier blind spot, it helps not to dwell too long on the quality of Beyoncé’s albums, which are overwhelmingly excellent and, at the very minimum, conceptually and technically impressive. They often sound as if they required more labor and thought than all other albums released in a given year put together. They make ambition sound ecstatic.
But awards shows are arbitrary, and awards themselves not terribly meaningful: If you take winning seriously, you must also take losing seriously. (Beyoncé has now been nominated for 99 Grammys, and won 35.)
Still, the fact that Beyoncé hadn’t won album of the year before was a Grammy narrative so loud and persistent that it’s made its way into acceptance speeches, industry self-flagellation and ultimately, maybe, into Beyoncé’s music itself.
Mostly it had the effect of rendering one of pop’s most successful and influential stars as, effectively, an underdog.
Given the scale of ambition of her work, and also its level of excellence, this is an awkward tension. But it also underscored a more pervasive problem with the Grammys, which is how it has frequently sidelined Black performers, especially Black women. Given how conversations about equity have roiled the Recording Academy in recent years — whether in the form of Black artists boycotting the awards, or comments from a former leader minimizing the work of female artists — Beyoncé’s losses were personal, but also emblematic.
Perhaps no album could have more appropriately addressed these circumstances than “Cowboy Carter,” which is part of a group of Beyoncé albums that double as treatises on overlooked Black musical histories. It troubles the very notion of country music, and also casts a spotlight on the mainstream country music industry, which favors very narrow stripes of the genre, and has largely regarded Beyoncé’s efforts with a collective silence that feels a little like indignant defiance.
But you can also read “Cowboy Carter” as an implicit taunt to Grammy voters. Perhaps the queer Black dance music that informed “Renaissance” was too elusive for them. Maybe the cross-platform dominance of “Lemonade” and the shock of the “Beyoncé” surprise release overpowered the musical dexterity of those albums. Or perhaps, simply, the voting blocs didn’t have ears and minds tuned to her frequency.
But a tender read of the Beatles’ “Blackbird”? Warm appearances from Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson? Collaborations with Post Malone and Miley Cyrus? Viewed cynically, “Cowboy Carter” is peak Grammy bait — an album that showcases the unique creative vision and unmatched execution of one of the signature pop stars of the 21st century, and also an album of hard-to-miss nostalgia and genre faithfulness that even the most ancient Grammy voter would recognize.
For album of the year, “Cowboy Carter” is a radical pick, in how it reupholsters the idea of country music, centering Black collaborators young and old. (Or given country’s Black roots, perhaps deupholsters is the right word.) It is a traditionalist pick in its mindfulness of the genre’s conventions and elders. And it is still an outsider pick, for the simple fact that Black performers — even Beyoncé — are still too frequently overlooked in settings like these.
“I want to dedicate this to Ms. Martell,” she said in her acceptance speech, acknowledging Linda Martell, who was the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry, and who also appears on “Cowboy Carter.”
Beyoncé was nominated for 11 awards on Sunday, and conveniently sneaked into her seat just before “Cowboy Carter” won best country album, making her the first Black woman to win that prize. She also took best country duo/group performance for “II Most Wanted,” a duet with Miley Cyrus. Those victories were mild rebukes of Nashville insularity and orthodoxy, but also the result of a global superstar being nominated in categories where her name recognition outpaced everyone else’s in aggregate. (She did not win best Americana performance or best melodic rap performance, both genre categories that were won by traditionalists.)
Beyoncé now becomes only the fourth Black woman to win the Grammys’ top prize, following Lauryn Hill, Whitney Houston and Natalie Cole. Not Aretha Franklin. Not Missy Elliott. Not Mary J. Blige. Not Diana Ross. Not Janet Jackson. Not TLC. Not Anita Baker. Not Mariah Carey. Not Nicki Minaj. Not Nina Simone.
It’s easy to argue that a Grammy Awards system that has often failed to acknowledge the power of Beyoncé’s finest art isn’t much of a system at all, and that maybe as a result, the show doesn’t matter.
But it does, if only because Beyoncé has kept showing up, granting the awards legitimacy in her willingness to, publicly at least, accept the outcome. Her victory, though, allows the Grammys to close its undervaluing-Beyoncé chapter and move on, and it allows Beyoncé to, should she want to, simply stay home. The point has been proven.
