The Grammy Awards is an event that most music fans look forward to, to hopefully see their favorite artists, records, and albums honored.
Since its inception, the awards have set out to recognize “outstanding” achievements in music, and this year’s awards contained much excitement with experienced, well-known, first time winners such as Victoria Monet, Miley Cyrus, and Karol G.
With something so personal as music being honored, there’s sure to be debate over the winners and losers of each category. In past years the most controversial topic has been Album of the Year and the lack of Black Woman who have won in the category.
This, in 2024, remains an issue.
The last Black woman to win this prestigious award, was Lauryn Hill in 1999, for the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which was critically acclaimed and debuted at number one on the Billboard music charts.
Notable albums that have been snubbed in the past from winning this award include, Whitney by Whitney Houston, The Emancipation of Mimi by Mariah Carey, and Cuz I Love You by Lizzo.
This year, the album Midnights by Taylor Swift won over SOS by SZA, which stayed at the top of the Billboard 200 for 10 weeks and sold over 300,000 units in the US, and The Age of Pleasure by Janelle Monae. Though Taylor Swift is an extremely talented artist, you can see a clear gap between the quality of these albums.
In different years, through different examples, it seems that the criteria for what it takes to win Album of the Year have changed. In some years the Grammy voters choose the artist who had the best-selling album of the year, while in others they may honor an underground artist.
The issue stands that there is a clear underrepresentation of Black artists winning Album of the Year.
This ongoing issue was spotlighted during Jay-Z’s speech after winning the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, which was created to pay tribute to artists who have used their voices outside of music to make a difference.
He brought up the fact that though Beyonce is the most-awarded artist in history, she has never been awarded Artist of the Year. At Sunday’s ceremony Jay- Z called out the Recording Academy’s ever-changing criteria saying, “So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work. Think about that. The most Grammys; never won album of the year. That doesn’t work.”
Beyonce’s latest album RENAISSANCE was critically acclaimed, with songs like “BREAK MY SOUL” inspiring fans to “Release the stress,” that came from a global pandemic, and “CUFF IT” letting them know it’s okay to “feel like falling in love”. In addition, SZA’s album featured anthems like “Far” and “Nobody Gets Me,” which dominated the airways and our social media feeds, proving that even when an album is numerically knocking people off the charts, the recognition still isn’t there.
In many ways, the Recording Academy makes it seem that if you are a Black woman who makes music, you’ll never be able to reach the Grammy peaks that white artists have and continue to reach, even if you are making better quality works.
With the Academy having a subset of divisions that are supposed to show their commitment to diversity and inclusion, such as the Back Music Collective and Women In The Mix, the Academy must do more through their actual award system to show they actually care about these causes and represent all music.