[dropcap]E[/dropcap]veryone celebrated when Beyoncé won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album with Lemonade. When the time came to present the award for Album of the Year, however, Beyoncé surprisingly lost to Adele. Even Adele was shocked that Bey didn’t win and actually praised Lemonade’s musicality and cultural impact. The Grammy’s spent the whole night and week prior advertising that Beyoncé would be performing at their show and then didn’t even award her the award everyone expected her to get.
It’s certainly up for debate whether or not Adele’s album, 25, is better than Beyoncé’s album, Lemonade, but it’s hardly debatable that the Grammy’s used Beyoncé’s name to generate buzz for the awards show. Many people tweeted about only watching the show for her performance and to see her win all the awards. The Grammys even had the audacity to mention throughout the night how many awards she was nominated for and then proceeded to not award them to her. Beyoncé’s name was paraded around and advertised by CBS to draw attention to their show and garner stronger ratings, yet they couldn’t even acknowledge her talents.
Lemonade and Formation being snubbed isn’t the problem, rather it’s the fact that Beyoncé was hyped up by CBS the entire night and wasn’t awarded.
The advertising for Adele was all but nonexistent in comparison to Beyoncé so it’s questionable as why they thought Adele deserved the award. There’s a long history, dating back to slavery, to using Black labor for selfish benefits and not giving Black people what they’re owed for that work. That’s not to imply that Beyoncé only performed at the show in promise of a Grammy, but there are basic functional similarities. Similar to how Taylor Swift used the Kanye VMA incident to further her career, the Grammy’s used their infamous constant snubbing of Beyoncé to get rating tonight.
It’s not fair to use Beyoncé’s name for profit and then to not acknowledge how incredibly successful and well made her album is. Huge numbers of people tuned in to see Beyoncé perform and win awards so it’s not surprising that her biggest categories were shown at the end of the night. Fans had to wait throughout the entire night to see if Beyoncé would win the biggest awards, and they were shot down in rapid succession. Lemonade and Formation being snubbed isn’t the problem, rather it’s the fact that Beyoncé was hyped up by CBS the entire night and wasn’t awarded. People can argue all they want about who deserved to win the awards, but it’s hard to argue that Beyoncé wasn’t being used by the network for ratings.
