The 65th Annual Grammy Awards, held Sunday at Los Angeles’s Crypto.com Arena, was music’s biggest night — and it was predicted to be a really big night for Beyoncé, specifically. In some ways, it truly was. The diva picked up four trophies at the ceremony, bringing her grand total to 32 and establishing her as the most-decorated artist in Grammy history.
However, two of Beyoncé’s awards were presented off the air, at Sunday afternoon’s pre-show Premiere Ceremony, and she actually missed one of her on-air categories because, according to the host, Trevor Noah, she was stuck in L.A. traffic. She was widely predicted to win the night’s most prestigious honor, Album of the Year, for Renaissance — her fourth nomination in that category, following her controversial defeats in previous years to Taylor Swift, Beck, and Adele — but once again, she lost, this time to Harry Styles’s Harry’s House. Big L.
Harry’s House was undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed albums of 2022 — in fact, in Yahoo Entertainment’s year-end critics’ poll, it ranked second, while Renaissance was at No. 3 — the optics weren’t great here, bringing to mind that awkward 2017 Grammy moment when Adele’s 25 won and the British belter spent much of her time at the podium practically declaring that Beyoncé’s Lemonade had been robbed. Styles’s didn’t go quite that far in his Album of the Year acceptance speech Sunday, but his reaction was noticeably muted… As it should be.
With Beyonce’s 32 wins, it should be noted that with Renaissance losing Album of the Year and “Break My Soul” respectively losing Record and Song of the Year to Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and, in a bit of an upset, to Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That,” she still has only won once in a Big Four category — when “Single Ladies” was named Song of the Year way back in 2010. (Lizzo actually devoted a good portion of her Record of the Year acceptance speech Sunday to praising Beyoncé, even sharing a cute anecdote about ditching school in the fifth grade to attend a Beyoncé concert.
The Grammy’s have always been a bit out of touch, but this time they robbed B.