Grammy Night Crowns Beyoncé Biggest Winner Ever

The most important awards in the Anglo-Saxon music industry began speaking in Spanish. Bad Bunny stood up and danced with The blackout to the Grammys since he entered the arena crypto.com of the Angels. “Now everyone wants to be Latino,” she launched during her performance, brought to the American public by CBS, who offered subtitles announcing “singing not in English.” The Puerto Rican closed 2022 as the most listened to artist on the planet on the platforms of streaming and with a world tour where he filled larger stadiums than the one that hosted tonight’s gala. This Sunday, Benito Antonio Martínez, started the evening with a historical event. He was the only Latino to have placed an album in Spanish in the Album of the Year category, one of the most relevant. However, it only conquered the urban music category (and Rosalía won Latin Rock or Alternative Album with Motomami).

The most coveted award went to Harry Styles for Harry’s House, another phenomenon that competed for the first time in the most relevant categories: Recording, Album and Song. Two years ago, she had only won in the pop category with watermelon sugar. “Nobody makes decisions in recording studios thinking about how to get one of these,” Styles said, holding up the gramophone, the second he took with him that night. Last year, Styles filled Madison Square Garden in New York for 15 consecutive nights. On the other side of the country he did the same at the Forum in Los Angeles. The night, however, was for Beyoncé, who this Sunday has become the artist who has won the most Grammys in history.

Beyoncé arrived late to her big night. The queen of pop music showed that she is flesh and blood and fallible like the rest of mortals in the face of the cruel traffic in Los Angeles. Forty minutes had passed when she was called on stage to collect the award for best Rhythm & Blues song, for Cuff it. It was Chic’s legendary guitarist, Niles Rodgers, and collaborator on the hit who took the stage on her behalf. “I’m surprised traffic can stop you,” Trevor Noah, the evening’s host, told Beyoncé when she finally arrived several minutes later. “I thought you were traveling through time and space,” added the South African comedian, who reprized the same role as last year and recently made headlines for giving up his talk show night.

That award was the third of the night for Beyoncé. During the ceremony that precedes the television broadcast, the Houston singer had already triumphed in the categories of Best Traditional R&B Song and in the Dance or Electronic category. With queenssance, the star got nine nominations. She tied her husband, rapper Jay-Z, with 88 nominations. Three awards were enough for Beyoncé to equal Hungarian conductor Georg Soltri as the Recording Academy’s biggest winner. The night had more surprises for the artist, who won four statues. On Wednesday, the artist announced her first world tour in four years. The event promises to put Ticketmaster’s ticketing service to the test after the fiasco with Taylor Swift.

“I’m trying not to get too excited, just to receive tonight,” an emotional Beyoncé said on stage when she won her 32nd Grammy, with which she surpassed Soltri’s 31. She thanked her family and especially her uncle Jonny, an influential figure who helped raise her alongside her sister, Solange. Jonny, a gay man who died of HIV, exposed the artist to much of the dance music of the ’70s and black influences that shape queenssancea work that has been thought of as the first installment of a trilogy.

“You are the artist of our lives,” he confessed to Beyoncé Lizzo, the Record of the Year winner for About Damn Time. The singer is an activist who breaks down barriers and empowers women who have lived on the margins of the entertainment industry. Originally from Detroit, Lizzo is on a winning streak. In September, she won an Emmy for a reality show that gives voice to women who are happy with the body they have. Lizzo is halfway to the famous EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony), the most important awards in the United States. Viola Davis became the eighteenth person to join this exclusive list this Sunday. She won for giving voice to her memoir in her audiobook.

The night had a marked tribute to the different legacies that black music has left in the industry. This was the guiding thread of the musical shows at the gala. From the Academy’s lifetime achievement award to Berry Gordy, the executive who created Detroit’s Motown’s distinctive sound, and Smokey Robinson, one of the genre’s most recognizable voices with his group, The Miracles. Stevie Wonder was in charge of paying tribute to them with Tears of a clown and higher grounda success of inner visionsfrom 1973. In the Best New Actress category, Samara Joy, a 23-year-old black jazz singer from the Bronx whose voice sounds like legends like Billy Holiday, won.

If Jay-Z and Beyoncé lead a monarchy in a kingdom that blurs the lines between business and music, the night has also given space to talents who have been at the royal court for less time, but whose current influence is notorious. This is the case of Kendrick Lamar, the rapper from Compton, one of the Los Angeles bastions of rap. Lamar won three awards tonight, including Best Genre Album for Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, a work that invites to discuss masculine roles, therapy and even talk about domestic violence. “I found perfection with this album,” said Lamar, who at 35 years old already has 17 awards.

The most important message of the night came with the most memorable number, a parade of the voices that shaped hip hop, a genre that is now half a century old. The date, as calculated by rapper LL Cool J (although there is no consensus on the matter), is taken from the release of the first recordings by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Although the date of birth is blurred, the 26 numbers and mc’s (masters of ceremonies) that paraded across the stage of the Crypto arena showed the strength that it has gained. They were Black Thought, Run DMC, Dj Jazzy Jeff (without Will Smith), Public Enemy, Rakim, De la Soul, Scarface, Ice-T, Queen Latifah, Method Man, Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliot, among many others.

The long number, which included hits from five decades, buries a controversy not so distant. In 2019, the rapper Childish Gambino, one of the favorites of that year, boycotted the awards and did not attend the gala in a gesture of protest against the treatment that the organizers gave to the rap and hip hop categories, which in some editions have been omitted from the television broadcast. It happened in 1989, when Will Smith and Jazzy Jeff, who were the first to start a protest, won. Four years ago, when Gambino became the first rapper to win Song of the Year for his viral This is America, his absence marked the ceremony. And tonight will be remembered as the voice of rap and the night that consecrated Beyoncé.

babelia