65th Annual Grammys Award Winners
Just last week, this year’s Grammy Awards were hosted in Los Angeles on Feb. 5, 2023. About a month before the Oscars are set to happen (some of which may be given to songwriters who wrote pieces for movies), the Grammy Awards recognize those who have made great achievements within the music industry as a whole and across a variety of genres. This year, we saw awards given to artists who have been a part of the music scene for decades, as well as newer, up-and-coming artists still making their imprint on the music world.
This year’s winner of the Song of the Year award went to long-time blues singer and guitarist Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That,” which was released in 2022. While Raitt released her first album in 1971, we also saw newer artists, such as Lizzo, who released her first album in 2013, win awards like Record of the Year, for her song “About Damn Time.” In addition to this, we also saw Harry Styles, who has been around in the music scene since 2010, and whose presence has shifted from being a part of One Direction to being a standalone artist, win Album of the Year for “Harry’s House.” The top single of this album being “As It Was.”
There were also artists who won multiple awards, such as Beyonce, who won an award for Best Dance/Electric Recording, an award for Best Dance/Electronic Music Album, and an award for Best Traditional R&B Performance. Respectively, the awards won were for Beyonce’s “Break My Soul,” her album “Renaissance,” and her performance for “Plastic Off the Sofa.” There was even pushback from Beyonce fans, some of whom shouted things like, “She should have won!” during Harry Styles’ acceptance speech for winning Album of the Year, instead of Beyonce. This is interesting to note, given the fact that after that night, Beyonce became the artist with the most Grammy awards won.
We also saw some other winners who won multiple awards, such as Kendrick Lamar for Best Rap Performance, “The Heart Part 5,” and Best Rap Album, “Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.” It seems as if
the repeat winners often won an award in their genre of music and then won the corresponding performance award in said genre.
Finally, we saw that various artists who worked on the movie Encanto won the Grammy award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. This is not surprising, given the popularity of Encanto since it was released in Nov. of 2021. In fact, it won an Oscar just last year for Best Animated Feature. It is lovely to see a movie that provided much needed representation for Latinx children and adults all around the globe get the recognition it deserves both in the form of a Grammy award and in the form of an Oscars award.
Overall, we saw an array of artists across various genres and categories earn recognition for their work in the music industry—spanning from artists who are more known by the older generations and those who are more popular amongst today’s children, teens, and young adults.
I think it’s unfortunate that you left out the entire context for why “Beyoncé fans” believed that Beyoncé should’ve won “over Harry Styles”, which is that it had nothing to do with Styles but everything to do with the Grammys who never give the main category awards to people of color, and instead try to keep out of controversy by using the urban categories as a little consolation prize (and conveniently just using their names in nominations and ads leading up to the show in order to build hype and gain more viewers). If there is someone who deserves recognition for showing much deserved representation currently it’s Beyoncé and all of the people she has collaborated with for her projects. Breaking barriers wasn’t given the praise it deserved when it was Ella Fitzgerald or Aretha Franklin or Janet Jackson or Lil’ Kim doing it, and it still isn’t now that it’s Beyoncé doing it. Making it seem like it’s just delusional Beyoncé fans who are continuously let down by the Grammy committee is misleading and inaccurate.
The only thing that related to Styles specifically was his slightly tone deaf statement in a grammy awards setting, saying “this doesn’t happen to people like me very often“, but once again that was not the real reason for the backlash which was aimed at the Grammys.