On Sunday, February 2nd, Beyoncé took home the coveted award for Album of The Year for her 2024 release, Cowboy Carter.
What immediately followed was a massive wave of hate that came crashing against her. Fan wars broke loose in the scariest corners of Twitter, videos from the ceremony of Billie Eilish tearing up inspired hundreds of fan edits set to depressing balladry, and old white men awakened from their slumber to hatefully rant on Facebook about how Beyoncé could never be a country artist.
Personally, I’ve been a massive Charli XCX fan for years and years now, so I sat on my couch wearing my finest bratty chartreuse green and prepared myself for what would most likely be another Taylor Swift win. Three major Grammys darlings, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Beyoncé were all up for the award, so I had a sneaking suspicion an underdog like Charli wasn’t going to take the trophy home.
And I was mostly correct. I could argue for hours about how Brat was the most brilliant and culturally significant album of the year, but the voters of the recording academy didn’t set up a meeting with me, so the award went to Beyoncé.
This resulted in plenty of initial shock, including the aforementioned Billie Eilish tears. Hit Me Hard and Soft was a mediocre and relatively weak album, and honestly I’m glad it wasn’t chosen, especially considering the Grammys previous habit of absolutely adoring both Eilish and her brother and smothering them in awards.
Beyoncé made her way up to the stage, accepted her handcrafted hunk of zinc alloy, and gave her speech. Online, people quickly noticed that she didn’t acknowledge or thank any of her peers who were also nominated in the category, resulting in her being called self absorbed and insensitive. God forbid a woman takes a moment for herself.
Meanwhile, Taylor Swift maintained her positive attitude, even though she hadn’t won anything all night. She was nominated for her album The Tortured Poets Department, which was a tedious and self serious work that would have benefitted from some tracklist editing. At the ceremony though, she was clearly there to have fun and support her friends, as well as dance to Not Like Us with her champagne flute clutched in her hand.
Anyway, the uproarious response to this award has warranted a lot of questioning into why exactly people are so aggravated by this win. One of the most obvious reasons is that the album itself just wasn’t commercially or culturally successful enough to earn the award. And while I agree with this take, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.
There have been countless years where people have disagreed with the outcome of the award, but never before has there been this level of public unrest. For example, at the 2015 Grammys, Taylor Swift’s 1989 took home the award over Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. And while 1989 is a very iconic and successful album, I think that To Pimp a Butterfly is regarded as far more valuable and overall a better album.
A group of people were upset over this outcome of course, but the cultural gravity of that decision was far smaller than this year’s one. I talked to one of my friends about his opinion on the decision, and he brought up something that I hadn’t fully thought about, which is the underlying tone of racism throughout all of this.
Most simply put, when it comes to these huge awards there’s a general upset when a Black person wins over a White person, but there isn’t one when a White person wins over a Black person.
In my opinion, there weren’t any absolutely prodigious albums on the ballot this year that were guaranteed to get the award, so the intensity of the cultural upset over this doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s ironic too, considering that the masses have begged for years for the Grammys to be less corrupt, and the first year where they blatantly attempt to recognize some diversity is also the first year where public outrage over their decision is tremendous.
In this modern fandom climate, complete obsession is required for an album to be deemed as valuable. An album can’t just be good now, it has to be flawless or a disaster. And Cowboy Carter is being thrown into the disastrous category, even though it’s well thought out and a perfectly fine record.
Country music doesn’t have to just be the same twangy 4 chords, and it doesn’t have to be a white dominated genre. Why are we penalizing someone for trying to push boundaries and make history when we should instead be celebrating them? Our society begs for social change and growth and then we get shocked and irritated when it actually happens.
Look, Cowboy Carter is no masterpiece, but it’s not as pathetic of a work as people online are making it seem. Far worse albums have won the award; I recommend listening to 2012’s winner, Mumford & Sons’ Babel.
To those that are still so stressed over Beyoncé winning, here’s my recommendation. First, put your phone down and take a deep breath, because your 9 hour daily screen time is showing. Then actually fully listen to the album first before you have a public panic attack over it winning.
After literally 99 Grammy nominations, it’s about time that Beyoncé finally won Album of the Year. Is it the album of hers that is the most deserving? Definitely not. But if this year’s Grammys taught us anything, it’s that they’re attempting to settle the score, whether or not their choices are valid.